State’s harness racing shifts to Wednesdays
TASMANIAN harness racing will switch from Sundays to Wednesdays in September, which will effectively change the landscape of horse racing in the state.
Racing will vacate its regular Sunday evening slot to race on Wednesday nights, a timeslot that has proven popular with Tasmanian harness racing punters in the past with strong turnover results.
This will leave only one local race meeting over the weekends in September, with thoroughbreds to continue to race on the synthetic at Devonport.
The move to Wednesday nights next month was made possible through the collaboration of Tasracing and Sky Racing as a result of track renovations at Redcliffe in Queensland, which will leave the Sunshine State with only two provincial harness tracks, none of which can accommodate the Wednesday timeslot.
Hobart will host the first Wednesday night meeting next week with the first race scheduled to start at 5.27pm followed by meetings in Launceston (11 September), Hobart on September 18 with the Launceston Pacing Club to host the final meeting for the month a week later. Sunday night meetings return on September 29 with an eight-race card programmed in Hobart.
The Wednesday night harness meetings in Tasmania will be shown on Sky Racing 1, Sky Racing Active as well as a hosted Live Stream on Tasracing’s popular live stream service, TasracingTV.
The Wednesday meetings will also continue to be exported into New Zealand.
September also will be a big month for Tasmanian harness racing off the track with two harness review forums to be staged in the north of the state.
The first forum was held in Hobart last week, with forums to be held at the Devonport Showgrounds next Tuesday and the Mowbray Racing Centre on Thursday, September 5. HARNESS trainer Ben Yole ended the season last Sunday night with a treble to take his season tally to 181 wins, which is a record that probably only he can trump.
Yole won the title last season with 124 wins that equalled the previous season, but the most recent tally has taken his business to a new level. Yole also snared 408 minor placings from 2660 starters for $1,291,649 in prizemoney.
Yole has dominated in Tasmania for the past three seasons and he also has branched out by setting up a satellite stable in Victoria which already has proven successful. The trainer’s younger brother Mark Yole snared his second Tasmanian driver’s premiership by booting home 88 winners to finish 16 clear of Ricky Duggan. PROMINENT Tasmanian harness owner-breeder Mick Maxfield has struck gold yet again, this time with his talented three-year-old Max Delight which gave his rivals a pacing lesson in Melbourne last Saturday night to take out the Group 1 3YO Breeders Crown Final.
The gelded son of Bettors Delight, trained in Victoria by David Aiken, led throughout and registered a mile rate of 1:55.9. The win netted Maxfield $100,000 and took the threeyear-old colt’s career stake earnings to $323,970.