COMING BACK FOR MORE: Punters flocked to Towac Park for Racing Orange's Saddle Up Sunday meeting on September 30. With 166 nominations already in the bag for the club's next meeting on Monday, the club is going from strength to strength. Photo: JUDE KEOGH 0930raceday16
RACING Orange keeps going from strength to strength with a mammoth 166 nominations across eight races for Monday’s meeting at Towac Park following on from a successful Saddle Up Sunday on September 30.
The new board has only been in power for 12 months but already the reputation of both the track and the new committee is growing.
Monday’s Maiden Plate has attracted the most interest from both metropolitan and country trainers with 34 horses nominated for the 1300 metre race while both the Class 2 Plate (1400m) and the Class 1 Handicap (1000m) have 23 nominations.
The kilometre-long Maiden Handicap has 25 interested runners.
All in all it makes for a monster TAB meeting - the club’s third of the season - on Monday.
But the boom in Orange won’t come as a surprise to Racing NSW chief Peter V’Landys.
V’Landys was on hand at the club’s Saddle Up Sunday meeting and said Racing NSW will be investing a lot of money and time into Orange’s Towac Park because he believes “the corporate governance structure in place at Racing Orange is the way to go.“
You only have to take at look at yesterday’s nominations to see the rest of the state’s thoroughbred community is with V’Landys on that one.
“Orange is one of the nicest cities in NSW that I’ve been around,” he continued.
“We believe it has the right demographic here with the people that live here and there’s people that love racing.”
V’Landys said country racing was an integral part of the Racing NSW brand.
“It’s essential. It’s 50 per cent of our business,” he said.
“We’ve shown that by rationalisation not being in our vocabulary. We want every race course in NSW to be viable and maintained.
“It’s an essential part of the fabric of life in Australia. It’s been here for 200 years, here in Orange over 150 years.
“Everywhere you go in every country town racing events are major events and we want to continue that.
“We’ve poured a lot of money into country racing.”
V’Landys was confident the Orange community would also continue to back Racing Orange, citing the 1500 people that flocked to Towac Park for the Saddle Up Sunday meeting as just the beginning for an exciting season.
Nominations for the Benchmark 65 Handicap (1000m) and the Benchmark 60 Handicap (2100m) have been extended to 11am today despite both races attracting 13 nominations each.
Weights for Monday’s Towac Park meeting must be in by 4pm today and acceptances by 9am tomorrow.
nick.mcgrath@ruralpress.com