BROKEN Hill’s Carnival of Cups has been cancelled with a small hope that it could run in June.
The annual Friday night event that kicks of the St Pat’s Racing weekend was cancelled during the week despite 58 horses nominating.
Harness Racing Broken Hill’s president Michael Honson said there were a number of issues including too many horses in specific races and not enough in others.
The local trotting season has been plagued with problems recently after the governing body declared nominations for a meeting had to be 40 or more runners before Harness Racing New South Wales would send a steward to oversee the races.
No meets had been held so far this season and Broken Hill Harness Racing Club management were hoping to have a big event for the Carnival of Cups on Friday.
“There were too many horse nominations in some races but not others,” Mr Honson said.
He said a delay in shutting off the nominations, made trainers jumpy and some pulled out so they could nominate for races they knew would go ahead.
“I know in the past, they have worked around issues, Mr Honson said. “But a lot of the nominations needed to know if it was going to go ahead.
“As the Mildura nominations close Tuesday, they wanted to be sure.
“They wouldn’t close our nominations, so we had one trainer pull 15 of their horses.
“When they do it for a living, you can’t blame them.
“Then you have HR NSW ringing and saying ‘well it’s definitely off now because these horses have been pulled’.
“I told them the night before to close the nominations.
“I am gutted as is everyone on the committee.”
Brett Scelly, Harness Racing NSW manager of racing, product development and infrastructure said TAB race meets leave little wiggle room.
“As this was a TAB/televised meeting, the conditions around 40 nominations were not applicable in this instance,” he said.
“The obligation is to produce at least six races with sufficient horses, which was not achieved with the nominations received.
“There were eight races on the card, but the nominations aren’t linear, they weren’t evenly spread across all races.
“We are currently working with the BHHRC to find an amended date in May or June for the club to run a TAB meeting.”
Mr Honson said HR NSW had been saying publicly they would help but seemed to offer little behind doors.
“They say ask for help and then they say they can’t do anything,” he said.
“I’d been asking to change the date and let us race in cooler weather, but the CEO of HRNSW told Barwon MP Roy Butler it was too expensive to change the date.
“In one race we had 12 horses nominate, but only nine would get a start.
“We ended up with four full races and a race with seven nominations and a race with six.
“But TAB said it was a minimum of six races and you must have at least seven in the race.
“We told all the nominations we were certain we would race, but it didn’t happen.
“We are very, very disappointed. TAB meetings are about making money, not about community sports.
“It’s very difficult.”
Mr Honson said he spent Wednesday having words with HR NSW CEO.
They managed to negotiate the possibility of another date later in the year.
“I said it needed to be a weekend and not Friday; as that’s when Mildura races,” Mr Honson said.
“We wanted May 25, but the Memorial Oval committee said they had dog shows that weekend.
“We might try for June 1. We are just waiting for them to confirm if the day is available.”
Despite the meeting not going ahead, Mr Honson said he was extremely grateful to Broken Hill City Council and the Memorial Oval Committee for support to get the oval looking good for the event.
“We are so appreciative of how much work they put in to get the oval ready for Friday,” he said.
