Sadly Archie your story re the walls come tumbling down aptly describes SA harness racing the moment.
I write as an observer from over the border and was watching last nights Port Pirie races and saw what happened with the blackout.
I know for fact that there was a horse from Mount Gambier that had travelled an approximately 8 hour trip one way, and one from Melbourne which is a 12 hour trip, plus a lot of horses from Adelaide that trekked on a 2.5 hour trip, and before they can even line up to race the meeting gets called off because they can’t turn on the lights.
Questions need to be asked.
Will these trainers get compensated?
All of the paid officials on the night who didn’t perform their jobs properly would have, so why wouldn’t they?
An even better question is why didn’t the club run some trials under lights beforehand to test that everything was okay? It didn’t make sense not to.
And why was there such a deafening silence from the club and HRSA on social media when the meeting was in jeopardy?
There would have been some trainers still on their way to the track when the meeting got called off, and it would have saved them a lot of time and money, not to mention the punters who kept betting into the pools and finding their money was locked up.
There has been a further deafening silence since about the matter from everyone in authority in South Australia.
It’s a very sad state of affairs.
WENDY from Warrnambool