Newcastle switching to all-weather in 2016
NEWCASTLE will be an all- weather track by the spring of 2016 after the BHA approved an £ 11million development plan by owners Arena Racecourse Company.
It means the North will finally have a circuit but the plan to tear up Newcastle’s turf track is controversial.
Its signature race, the Northumberland Plate, will be boosted to £150,000, but run on the AW after plans to switch it to the turf jumps circuit were scrapped.
Trainer Ralph Beckett tweeted disapproval, saying: ‘Difficult to think of a more depressing announcement,’ while Ed Vaughan described the news as an ‘act of vandalism’. But Malton- based Richard Fahey said: ‘If no other course wants to take the bull by the horns, I don’t see why it shouldn’t be Newcastle.’
The ARC plans, which include a floodlit straight mile, failed to gain approval last year but got through after changes to the proposals and guarantees over the quality of racing and prize money. The decision would appear to sound the death knell for an AW circuit at Catterick.
The thorny issue will be over fixtures. There is no appetite for an expansion of the AW programme and the BHA has insisted that is not planned. So Newcastle will be looking at 17 converted turf fixtures, a share of the floodlit allocation and meetings transferred from its other courses — Lingfield, Southwell and Wolverhampton.
It can also bid for the 175 BHA leasehold meetings, but that means inevitable losers.
Jockey Club-owned Kempton lost 33 per cent of its AW fixtures when Chelmsford City re-opened. They claimed £1m was lost from their profits.
Paul Fisher, Group MD of Jockey Club Racecourses, called for an ‘urgent review of the distribution of allweather fixtures’.
But this could get nasty with some costly legal bills.