Do we have to reinvent the wheel to save horseracing?
The few twilight meetings at Durbanville with live music in 2018 seemed to work, but there appears to have been little tangible enthusiasm to promote them.
Night racing is a rarity in Gauteng, but it’s a genuine hit in KZN where visiting owners and trainers rave about the ambience and vibe of the Gold Circle TGIF party at Hollywoodbets Greyville.
Candiese Lenferna captured this striking red sky at Hollywoodbets Greyville
In 1996 history was made when Hollywoodbets Greyville became the first racetrack in South Africa to successfully install floodlights, adding another dimension to the world of thoroughbred horseracing in the province.
The local operator has come a long way from 1993 when Natal raceclubs re-introduced breakfast racing, for two Saturday meetings in March of that year, at Scottsville and Clairwood.
The meetings were an extension of an experiment initiated in 1992, where breakfast racing was introduced to avoid clashes with major other, local, sporting events.
The Natal Clubs felt that the experiment would not be complete unless morning meetings were also tested on days where there were no other sport events in Natal.
The first of these meetings was held at Scottsville.
Attendance was marginally down, and the Pick Six pool took a knock in comparison to the previous year. A computer failure halfway through the meeting did little to cheer things up. There is no record as to what happened to the experiment.
What would you do to give racing a fresh, new edge?
