KZN Racing Operator Gold Circle have undertaken to ensure that an effort will be made to structure more attractive public holiday programmes in future after Monday’s Hollywoodbets Greyville fixture irked some regular players.
While we all realise that racing has shrunk and the dynamics are very different to 20 years ago, comparisons to the days of the Easter Bonnet at a packed Clairwood Park are probably also somewhat unrealistic.
But the seven race card on Monday really was ‘scraping the barrel’ in the words of a veteran KZN racing man.
Besides a variety of telephone calls and messages left at Sporting Post’s offices, Gary Rahme, who has been in the game for 49 years as an owner, bookmaker and punter, said that the Easter Monday meeting was ‘a disgrace’.
He wrote that it’s ‘a seven race impossible poly meeting’ and bemoaned the fact that this slot used to be a top racemeeting. He concluded by saying that they might as well have given us a Kimberly sand meeting.
Gold Circle Racing Executive Raf Sheik provided some background, confirming that fixtures are agreed between the Racing Operators, and as is well known, ironically following the closure of the Kimberley race track some years back that Mr Rahme refers to, that KZN agreed to fill the void on Mondays and increase its number of race meetings to 120 per annum.
Raf Sheik – prepared to listen to customer concerns
“At that time the population of racehorses in KZN was approximately 2200, but unfortunately this number, for a variety of reasons, not least of which was the Covid pandemic, has now dwindled to less than 1000. Consequently, the field sizes in KZN are under pressure and a few race meetings have already been cancelled due to a paucity of acceptances,” he said.
Sheik pointed out that the reduction in horse population is not just a concern in KZN but countrywide, which has resulted in every province reducing fixtures.
“We have therefore jointly made a recent decision when discussing fixtures for 2024 not to support Monday racing any longer and as a result the number of race meetings in KZN in 2024 will reduce to the previous more manageable number of approximately 104 race meetings per annum.”
With that being said, he acknowledged that a more attractive racing programme should have been considered for the recent Easter Monday race meeting.
“We agree that a public holiday race meeting should be viewed differently from an ‘ordinary’ midweek fixture and for that we apologise. However, it was never cast in stone that KZN races on Easter Monday (unlike our traditional race meeting on 26 December), and the Easter Bonnet has not been run for many years now.”
Not everbody was unhappy on Monday! Owner Lawrence Pillay welcomes Mission Rocks and Muzi Yeni back to the number 1 box (Pic -Candiese Lenferna)
Sheik said that Gold Circle appreciates the concern raised by Mr Rahme and others and will endeavour to ensure a better-quality programme on the weekends and public holidays going forward.
“But we must never lose sight of the fact we also have a responsibility to provide races for the many horses at the lower end of the merit rating scale, which constitute the majority of the horse population in every racing jurisdiction around the world,” he said in conclusion.
The next KZN racemeeting is on the polytrack on Wednesday 12 April. Off time of the first is 12h55.
