By David Nagel
Cranbourne Harness Racing Club (CHRC) thoroughly deserves the focus of the harness racing world when it hosts the $100,000 DECRON Cranbourne Pacing Cup and $50,000 Bruce Skeggs Memorial Cranbourne Totters Cup on Saturday 17 December.
CHRC President David Scott sat comfortably with the fact that the club also belongs in Group-1 company.
“We like to think of ourselves as one of the pre-eminent country harness racing clubs, and over the last decade have invested heavily in an on-course stabling and training facility,” Scott said.
“Our intention has been to increase participation at a local level, because we recognise it’s difficult to be reliant on trainers that have to travel from the other side of town to race at our track.
“We’ve done two things on that front.
“We now predominantly race on Sunday’s, to negate traffic concerns that the trainers might have, and at the same time we’re building a local horse population that provides us with a walk-on, walk-off contribution to our race-day fields.
“It’s on a much smaller scale to the Turf club, but it provides walk-on, walk-off access to both training and racing.”
Scott said the Cranbourne Harness Training Centre had been a huge success on many fronts.
“The trainers that have joined have been successful in the sense that we have trained 360 winners to date, so the centre continues to produce winners, but it also provides an opportunity for trainers to make a start – if they’re beginning their careers,” he said.
“Providing these facilities avoids the need for capital expenditure on their part, to set up on their own, and provides a sustainable model for them to train and stable their horses.
“And it’s not only for young people starting out.
“Trainers like Noel Alexander and Jayne Davies – they’ve been leading trainers in the state and trained massive teams but in their twilight years they have sold their property at Clyde and now run a boutique stable from the Cranbourne Training Centre.
“We started out with 45 boxes and we now have 70 boxes on site, we have three work barns, a four-horse wash, two horse-walkers, treadmill, pool…it has all the facilities that trainers need to have the best chance of training a winner.
“The trainers are appreciative that they’ve got the opportunity to train, because in most instances, in the absence of this centre, they may not be involved in the game.”
Scott there were associated benefits of being a dual equine occupant at Cranbourne.
“As the equine codes in particular grow out here, things like access to veterinarians, equine therapists, all those sorts of things that come with a big horse population become more readily available than ever,” he explained.
“And we’d like to think those types of things set the Cranbourne Harness Racing Club apart from most other harness racing clubs, in terms of the trainer access to those types of services.
“We’ll look to grow it over time and also continue to invest in the racecourse, with our partners at the racecourse.
“We continually look to be at the top of our game and we’re looking at a project between the turf club and harness racing club that will see the replacement of our raceday horse stalls.
“That’s the beauty of our shared-tenancy at the racecourse, the ability to co-contribute to those types of projects and create first-class outcomes between the clubs.”
