Plan unveiled to improve Seymour track

Racing Victoria (RV) and the Seymour Racing Club (SRC) have today outlined plans aimed at enhancing the Seymour track and ensuring that it fulfils its potential.

Following ongoing analysis and testing, RV and the SRC have made the decision to adjust the grass species at the track to ensure that it is best placed to race consistently throughout the entire year.

The current rye grass will be over-sown with kikuyu grass at the start of December, with the two grass species combining to deliver a track that can perform to its best in both hot and cold periods.

The enhancement will require the SRC’s three summer meetings (12 and 23 December 2019, and 18 February 2020) to be transferred to other venues to allow the grass time to consolidate. These transfers will be confirmed at a later point.

Seymour is scheduled to host six meetings this spring, including the Listed Seymour Cup on Sunday, 20 October.

In order to ensure the track is in a suitable condition for its busy spring program, the SRC will race with an adjusted schedule that limits the Club to one meeting per month throughout winter.

To that end, the race meeting scheduled for Thursday, 23 May at Seymour has been transferred to Wangaratta, while the meeting on Monday, 1 July has been moved to Tatura.

SRC Chief Executive, Penny Reeve, said, “The track is safe and in an improved condition from 12 months ago with better feedback from participants across our recent meetings. That said, it can still get better and we want to ensure that it does.

“The analysis has shown that the root structure of the rye grass is struggling when the ground temperature rises significantly in late summer and early autumn, so we expect the introduction of the kikuyu grass will improve the track’s year-round performance.

“The plan announced today is in the best long-term interests of the track, with the reduced load throughout this winter ensuring that the Seymour Cup can be showcased at our track this October after not being run in 2018.

“While it is always disappointing to transfer race meetings, the adjusted schedule will allow us to best maintain the surface in the lead-up to a busy spring period in which Club is looking forward to hosting six meetings.”

As a result of the winter transfers, there will be a change of distances required for both the Wangaratta (23 May 2019) and Tatura (1 July 2019) meetings as follows: