Halls Gap Cup still on track, times pushed back due to extreme heat

Racing is tipped to go ahead on Friday despite high temperatures forecast for the raceday.

Racing Victoria and the Stawell Racing Club has announced a move to the race times, bringing the running forward on the day, with a proposed 12pm start, the cup to be run at 3pm.

The Bureau of Meteorology has predicted a top temperature of 40 degrees for the first raceday at Stawell for the calendar year.

Stawell Racing Club operations manager Mark Percival said he was confident with any decision made by Racing Victoria.

"Our number one priority in racing is the welfare of horses and participants," he said.

"Racing Victoria have proposed to bring the races forward and during that process there is consultation work being done.

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"When decisions like this are made, I can't fault Racing Victoria. They are very open and work with clubs to get the desired outcome.

"We'll have extra vets on site to monitor the horses and their temperatures."

Mr Percival said there were also processes in place to ensure the horses were safely cooled down as soon as possible.

"Racing Victoria's hot weather policy isn't necessarily as straight forward as a certain degrees and it is implemented," he said.

"It's about how much humidity is in the air - that's what causes the most problems. A dry heat is not so bad for horses and participants but when you add in humidity it becomes something to be concerned about."

In past years, the organisation of the race meet has met with high temperatures.

In 2019, Racing Victoria rescheduled the meet to Monday as the Friday weather conditions were not suitable for racing.

In 2018, Racing Victoria implemented its Procedure for Racing in Hot Weather Policy and pushed the start times back to 12.30pm.

Mr Percival said the date of the cup was always a point of conversation, due to the scheduling of the race.

"The scheduling of the meet is to do with the way the calendar falls," he said.

"It's a balancing act. We try and have it on the first Friday after New Year in the hope visitors, especially those in Halls Gap will attend the race meeting.

"The date is certainly something we will look at moving forward."

Mr Percival said conditions would be monitored over the next few days, with regular updates.

"Any changes to race days would be a difficult decision to make," he said.

"I'm confident they will make the correct one. When they start formulating a view of what could happen we are notified straight away so we can get things happening from our end behind the scenes in case of change.

"It's all about communication, which Racing Victoria are really good one."

Mr Percival said there were plenty of activities to cool off in the shade.

"We'll have Kelly Sports there again which will be doing some art and craft in the shade plus some water based games," he said.

"There will be free water available for the kids and some slip and slides for them to play on."

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