Racing Victoria (RV) has today unveiled a revamped program for the 2022 racing calendar, with a series of changes implemented following consultation with key industry stakeholders and participants.
The program changes have been introduced due to the addition of the Good Friday meeting next year at Sale, which will host the inaugural edition of the $500,000 Country Discovery (1100m) on 15 April 2022, as well as the discontinuation of the race-free week which was trialled in July this year.
Following a review of the race-free week conducted in conjunction with industry participants, the trial will not be extended to 2022 with two additional meetings programmed in order to fill the void and some minor date changes made to three existing fixtures in late-July.
Ladbrokes Park (Sandown) on Wednesday, 27 July and Sportsbet-Pakenham Synthetic on Thursday, 28 July will host the new race meetings, whilst Warracknabeal (Monday, 25 July), Bet365 Bairnsdale (Tuesday, 26 July) and Bet365 Echuca (Friday, 29 July) will now each stage meetings across the remainder of the working week.
As a result of the addition of the two meetings (Ladbrokes Park and Pakenham Synthetic) to the race program in July, there will now be four more meetings scheduled that month next year than there were in 2021.
In order to accommodate Sale’s Good Friday fixture, which needs to be ratified by the Victorian Parliament early next year, there will be a switch of dates to the meetings held at Geelong and Benalla in the same week.
The Bet365 Geelong meeting will be pushed back a day from Tuesday, 12 April to replace the fixture at Sale, which had originally been programmed on Wednesday, 13 April before it was moved to Good Friday. As a result, the Benalla meeting which had been scheduled for Thursday, 14 April will now replace Geelong on the Tuesday (12 April), leaving Pakenham (night) as the only fixture on Thursday.
Finally, RV will also program two additional Picnic meetings, at Mansfield and Healesville respectively on Saturday, 2 April and Saturday, 9 April, in order to compensate for the late start to this year’s Picnic season caused due to COVID-19 restrictions.
A summary of the changes made to the 2022 racing calendar is as follows:
Date
|
Venue
|
Change
|
Saturday, 2 April 2022
|
Mansfield (Picnic)
|
Additional meeting
|
Saturday, 9 April 2022
|
Healesville (Picnic)
|
Additional meeting
|
Tuesday, 12 April 2022
|
Benalla
|
Moved from Thursday, 14 April 2022
|
Wednesday, 13 April 2022
|
bet365 Geelong
|
Moved from Tuesday, 12 April 2022
|
Friday, 15 April 2022
|
Sale
|
Moved from Wednesday, 13 April 2022
|
Monday, 25 July 2022
|
Warracknabeal
|
Moved from Sunday, 31 July 2022
|
Tuesday, 26 July 2022
|
bet365 Bairnsdale
|
Moved from Friday, 22 July 2022
|
Wednesday, 27 July 2022
|
Ladbrokes Park (Sandown)
|
Additional meeting
|
Thursday, 28 July 2022
|
Sportsbet-Pakenham Synthetic
|
Additional meeting
|
Friday, 29 July 2022
|
bet365 Echuca
|
Moved from Saturday, 30 July 2022
|