Club fights to keep entire washed out meeting

Albany Harness Racing Club is pushing to not lose Friday night’s major meeting altogether after it was called off by Racing and Wagering WA stewards because of extreme weather conditions.

The meeting was set to feature the 30,000 GWN Albany Cup (2683m) but heavy rain falling in the area, both the previous evening and on Friday morning, left stewards no choice but to abandon the fixture with the track surface too wet to race.

It was the club’s seventh meeting of the 2016-17 season which has 11 fixtures in total.

AHRC president Terry Rolfe said the club would work with RWWA to ensure the Albany Cup is held at one of the four remaining meets.

“A decision was made around 10am, the track (was) just too wet to race on,” he said.

“We are talking to RWWA about what are options we have.

“We may be able to transfer the whole meet to another date rather than lose those races, perhaps after our last current date which is March 11.

“There is a window there so we will push for the whole meeting to go ahead.

“Or the other option is to put the Albany Cup into one of the meetings that we have left.”

Rolfe expected a decision on the abandoned meeting in the next week.

RWWA harness tweeted on Friday morning that stewards had made the decision to abandon Albany’s meeting because of the extreme weather conditions.