By Mikayla van Loon
Yarra Valley Racing won’t have the start to its spring racing season as expected with flood waters impacting the track and causing a cancellation of the opening Cox Plate meet.
The race day scheduled for Saturday 22 October has had to be abandoned after excessive rain and floods left the track waterlogged.
“The grounds and the track were very wet and heavy before the rains, before the downpours and then when we had quite significant amounts of rain, the track and the grounds were inundated,” Yarra Valley Racing CEO Brett Shambrook said.
“So in this instance, the timeframe between the flood and the meeting on Cox Plate Day, Saturday, was just too short for us to be able to do the necessary repairs and cleanup to be able to race plus the forecast for the weekend was looking ominous.”
While structurally everything survived the floods, Mr Shambrook said there will be a bit of cleanup needed to get everything ready for future meets.
“It didn’t get into our main buildings. It went through our workshop, so there was a bit of a cleanup there and then some roadways and pathways were washed away, so we need to repair them. All in all, it could have been a lot worse.”
This would have been the return to hosting crowds Yarra Valley Racing was so looking forward to after two years of disrupted racing meets.
“[Everyone’s] pretty deflated, to be honest but optimistic at the same time. We don’t have enough time to sit around and dwell on it too much because we’re back into racing on Melbourne Cup Day and Oaks Day and then we’ve got Christmas meetings,” Mr Shambrook said.
“So we’ll just roll up our sleeves and get on with it, really but it is what it is, unfortunately. We’re becoming resilient. We’ve had all these obstacles thrown up in front of us from time to time and there’s always something new to challenge us.”
Being the season opener, Cox Plate Day can usually draw up to 4000 people to Yarra Glen for the event, a huge loss for Yarra Valley Racing and local tourism.
“It’s a very large day for us and it kicks off our season with a bang. So financially, it’s difficult for us to be behind the eight ball before the season even starts.
“Hopefully, everyone will come to our future race meetings and we can put it behind us.”
Although more rain is scheduled for next week, Mr Shambrook said he’s not worried about the impact it will have on the track.
“The harness meetings we have on Melbourne Cup, they are on a different track and it doesn’t get inundated, which is a positive. So I’m not really concerned about that.
“And then the 26th of November thoroughbred meeting is quite a while away, so surely things will improve before that time.”
Mr Shambrook said while this initial cancellation has been a bump in the road he is looking forward to getting back to normal very soon.
“I’m just looking forward to Melbourne Cup Day and having crowds back at the track. We haven’t had crowds at Melbourne Cup or Oaks Day for the last two years either. So we just really want to get back and get the capacity and do what we do without any obstacles.”
