Jane Grainger, President of West Meadows Raceway in Saskatchewan, recently updated Trot Insider on the progress of Canada's newest harness racing facility - one which could host live racing
as soon as this Summer.
"It has been a tremendous amount of effort and work through the last couple of years but we are ready to begin a new era of harness racing in the Regina area," Grainger told Trot Insider. "We are anxious to promote our schedule upon receiving final approval on 2011 dates from SLGA."
West Meadows applied for dates in 2010 but officials in Saskatchewan hesitated to grant dates until the track was closer to completion.
"The final touches were applied earlier in 2010 with the outside rail being completed, the SLGA test area, parking lots and constructing the individual official areas on the second level of the officials building which has the mutuels on the lower level," continued Grainger. "Picnic tables and bleachers have been set up trackside to give our race fans a close up and personal action-packed harness racing experience."
Grainger is optimistic that live racing will kick off this year. The new West Meadows website indicates that the track will host Sunday afternoon cards if the Saskatchewan Liquor and Gaming Authority grants race dates.
"We feel that race days at West Meadows Raceway will be a great compliment to the harness program in Yorkton and we're confident that adding the large Regina market will help position harness racing for further growth in Saskatchewan."
Here's hoping that this
Here's hoping that this happens to completion in time for several dates this summer / fall. If so, I will try to match them with some vacation time. Will the people in Belleville PLEASE TAKE NOTE!!
The people that have been
The people that have been behind this new Saskatchewan Harness Racing facility deserve a lot of credit. Harness Racing never should have been allowed to die in the first place and I am really pleased to see it rising up again.
Good luck to all those involved. You deserve it.
W2G.. You have done an
W2G.. You have done an extremely great job of this. We visited it this past summer. Very
Impressed. Good luck with it all. We will head to the races out there for sure if you get going..
Quite impressive. The
Quite impressive. The horsemen and horsewomen that I have met from Saskatchewan are very dedicated and they deserve a track in Regina. Also, it might minimize their pain of losing the Grey Cup game to our Alouettes.