Recent increases to the racing program in Victoria has required some creative scheduling by GRV and Clubs especially when the same class of meeting is run at the same venue in quick succession.
With Melbourne Metropolitan regions placed under a Covid19 curfew the BGRA’s race meeting on Saturday August 29 was shifted to the premium Saturday night time slight and converted to a full provincial race meeting meaning back to back provincial meetings on consecutive days amongst an already packed racing calendar.
The BGRA approached GRV regarding a potential “bitches preference” race meeting for the Friday twilight meeting, a proposal that GRV agreed to. Given the response from trainers to the programme, that had littlentime to promote and no fanfare, the concept is on the BGRA is hoping to further develop in the near future.
“It has long been considered that the female greyhounds are disadvantaged to a degree against the males on the horse shoe tracks and the increased racing schedule gave the Club an opportunity to dip the toe in the water as to a potential all bitches race meeting in the future” said BGRA Manager Troy Harley.
Harley continued “we have some feature races throughout the year for the girls and like to provide a varied feature race program that particularly focuses on the younger and restricted class greyhounds and we are keen to add an increased bitches focus as well”.
“To get eight Damsels Dash style races at short notice is extremely encouraging for our thought process and following on from successes of our Battlers Cup and the recent distance racing focus at Ballarat there is no doubt that participants enjoy and will support creative programming” added Harley.
The BGRA is grateful for the support of the participants in embracing the concept and to GRV for supporting the proposal and look forward to further such initiatives being implemented in the future.
The first race on Friday afternoon commences at 3.17pm with the greyhound girls taking the stage for races 1 – 5 and races 7, 9 and 10.
