INSTEAD of the laughter and fun of the country races at Balranald over the weekend, the racecourse remained quiet and empty.
Track issues and subsequent OH&S concerns meant the Balranald races, the first scheduled in the town since COVID, were cancelled with little notice.
“It was devastating, it would have had a devastating effect on a lot of people,” Balranald Racing Club President Tony Conway said.
On February 9, a steward from Racing NSW came and inspected the Balranald track and had some worries about sparsely grass areas on the track.
At the time, Mr Conway wasn’t too concerned, as they had just had a fair amount of rain and the committee was aware that a little bit of maintenance would be required to get the track race ready.
Then on March 9, a month later, another steward came to inspect the track, unbeknownst to either the Balranald Shire Council or the Racing Club, according to Mr Conway. The steward made a recommendation that he thought the track was still unsafe, just 10 days prior to the race meet, effectively barring the it from going ahead.
“Without being silly, we probably could have built a new race track in 10 days with the amount of equipment and expertise available around the area,” Mr Conway said.
“That’s probably the most galling point of the whole lot, that he never had a conversation with anyone about it.”
Mr Conway said the club had already purchased all the alcohol for the event, bought $2,500 worth of food, and had already committed to and started the advertising campaign which was about $3000.
“All that hard work, which was voluntary work that was done by committee and community members to get things in preparation,” Mr Conway said.
“We haven’t raced for nearly three years, and we were going to make it a free race meeting to everyone to come along free of charge to try and come back for a major community event,” he said.
“A lot of people were really looking forward to it, there was no consideration given to that.”
Despite the disappointment in the situation, Mr Conway said the safety of horses and jockeys always came first.
“I fully understand, no one is more aware of the fact that the safety of jockeys and the horses is paramount, we would never want to have a race meeting if we thought there would be a chance of anyone getting injured, a person or an animal, that’s at the forefront of our mind,” he said.
“We thought that we had the track in a safe condition to race on.”
Mr Conway said that with the football and netball season now starting to get underway, rescheduling the race meet was not really an option.
“Everyone understands that in country communities, footy and netball takes precedence over everything and that’s just the way it is,” he said.
“It’s a meeting that’s lost now.”
The next race meet in Balranald is scheduled for October.
“We’re hoping now that in October, Cox Plate Day, we can come back bigger and better than ever,” Mr Conway said.
