RV starts action plan on spring carnival

Tuesday 7 April 2020, 12:16pm

Racing Victoria is turning its attention towards the spring carnival after almost a month of crowd-free racing due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Chief executive Giles Thompson says RV is starting to shift its thinking from a week-to-week basis to a longer-term outlook.

He said Victoria's biggest racing clubs were considering different scenarios for their carnival.

"One of the challenges we face is there are so many unknowns," Thompson told RSN927.

"As we sit here, we just don't know what the world will look like in three weeks time.

"We didn't know what it would look like three weeks ago to what it would look like now and what it will look like in mid-May.

"We are beginning to run out of time and will have to make calls as we enter June.

"Right now, we don't think we have to make any core decisions about the spring and we're hoping that we'll continue to race and if we're continuing to race in four weeks time, then we can be more optimistic about the spring program."

More than 253 races have been held since racing in Victoria went behind closed doors on March 13.

Thompson said RV was continuing its drive towards reducing the number of people on course during race meetings.

"The reason why we are still racing today is because of these protocols and people are abiding by these protocols," Thompson said.

"I can't emphasise how important that is for those people in government and in the health authorities who understand what they (protocols) are and to see them being implemented."

Having entered a phase of prize money reductions brought on by a downturn in turnover, Thompson said it was too early to say whether spring purses would be affected.

"We don't have to make those decisions now and I'd rather wait until we have to because we'll have better information further down the track," he said.

– AAP

Latest News

Prime Thoroughbreds - We have a Host of Leaders in our Team

Tuesday, 29 June 2021

Prime Thor­ough­bred’s cur­rent rac­ing team is putt­ing to­gether quite a re­cord. We have 22 hors­es that have raced in our team at pre­sent. Six­teen of th­ese are win­n­ers in­clud­ing the Stakes win­n­ing trio Ru­bisa­ki, Fituese and Xtreme­time with Miss Di­vine Em and Miss In Charge run­n­ing 4th in Stakes races. This sees a stakes win­n­er to win­n­er ra­tio of 18.75% with a stake’s per­formed to win­n­er ra­tio of 31.25%. Th­ese are ex­cep­tio­n­al fig­ures.   More »

Freedmans land maiden Group One win

Saturday, 27 February 2021

Un­der-rat­ed fil­ly For­bid­den Love has emerged as an au­tumn car­ni­val smokey with a bril­liant per­for­mance to win the Sur­round Stakes at Rand­wick.  More »

Capriccio completes Damian Lane treble

Saturday, 27 February 2021

In a big day for coun­try-trained hors­es, War­r­nam­bool fil­ly Capric­cio has tak­en out the In­glis Dash for Daniel Bow­man.  More »

More news headlines »