MILDURA Harness Racing Club has been forced to postpone this year’s Mildura Cup because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The decision was made to discourage participant travel throughout Victoria during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Mildura Cup was scheduled to be held this week.
Tuesday night’s meeting has also been cancelled as harness racing officials continue to deal with the economic impact of the coronavirus crisis.
Harness Racing Victoria (HRV) also announced a new region based calendar.
“This model allows us to keep essential personal and participants at race meetings,” HRV CEO Dayle Brown said this week.
“It also provides us with the best opportunity to continue to conduct race meetings.
“The support we have received through regular and thorough consultation with our industry representative bodies during this challenging period has been really important and I thank them for that.”
The new racing model will see Victoria divided into six regions with meetings to be conducted across six tracks.
Mildura has been named as one of those locations, but Swan Hill has not.
Trots Club Victoria (TCV) president Tim Scala said the regional model made sense.
“We want to survive as an industry and come out the other side for this,” Scala said.
“It will mean that some clubs will have their racing transferred to another track or region, but we need to be happy that there will still be clubs operating.”
The next Mildura meeting will be held on Thursday night.
