Alberta Standardbred Horse Association racing manager Fred Gillis has commented on the 2009 race dates allocated for the province.
Gillis' comments come via a brief note on the Horse Racing Alberta website.
“It’s certainly better than what we started with,” Gillis was quoted as saying. “We’re still shut out of the big markets in the prime time of the season. But at least we’ve got 112 days of racing and we can work with that."
To view the breakdown of 2009 race dates in the province of Alberta, click here. To read comments from HRA chair Shirley McClellan and CEO Dr. David Reid regarding the dates, click here.
"A lot of our horsemen have come to realize how vulnerable our racing season was here in Alberta," Gillis furthered. "The original proposal had us racing in January and February and then being off until mid June. The biggest break in this schedule now will be five weeks which we can live with. And so, when the decision was made, there has been less griping than might have been the case.”
(With files from HRA)
I would like to know why the
I would like to know why the last few weeks in Edmonton the Standardbreds are only racing with 7 or 8 races cards when you look at how many horses are being entered per card. Take Sundays card for instance 8 races and 100 horses were entered and only 73 were drawn you mean to tell me you couldn't make a couple of extra races.
finally someone with
finally someone with optomism and common sense
From the dates that the HRA
From the dates that the HRA released, there is almost an 8 week break in September/October/November.
Did something change since then or which is correct?
You can basically break it
You can basically break it down into this: "Sure we're getting screwed, but at least they were nice enough to throw us a bone. Of course the bone is 6 hours away, has no outside barns, or hot water, and is on a bull ring track in the middle of the woods, where the grand total wagered on any card is about 2000 bucks, but its a bone."