Ontario race secretaries Ian Fleming and Scott McKelvie have discussed the challenges surrounding the carding of races during what has been a brutal winter in the province.
In a Guelph Mercury column penned by Dave Briggs, Fleming said that a lower horse population, the tough winter conditions and the changing industry landscape has made carding full races a challenge.
"People haven't been able to get horses ready this winter because of the extreme cold," said Fleming, who later went on to state that now “the tracks are falling apart (due to the thaw), so it's really been challenging for people to get young horses ready to race, or any kind of horse rehabilitated to race because the conditions for training them aren't very good. And there's fewer (horses) to start with (compared to during the era of the Slots at Racetrack Program)."
McKelvie told Briggs that Woodbine has been able to card races with steady field sizes, but that the race office hasn’t been in the position where it is necessarily turning people away.
“It's still been decent," McKelvie said. "We're getting eight or nine (horses per race) and getting our share of 10s, as well."
(With files from the Guelph Mercury)