FOR the first time in more than 100 years Warrnambool's May Racing Carnival will not be a three-day event - it will be either a one or two-day meeting instead.
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Talks are continuing between Warrnambool Racing Club, Racing Victoria and Country Racing Victoria about the make-up of this year's event after it was announced two weeks ago no spectators would be on-course this year.
Warrnambool Racing Club chief executive officer Tom O'Connor said prizemoney, programming and dates for the carnival should be finalised later this week.
"It's looks like being a one or two-day event," O'Connor said. "We're hoping to have things worked out later this week. There's still a lot of things we've got to finalise. Things are changing on the hour because of the coronavirus pandemic.
"It's all like a moving target, it's changing all the time. We offered $2.05 million in prizemoney in 2019. We know the prizemoney for this year would be down 10 per cent on that figure.
"It means the Grand Annual Steeplechase will now be worth $315,000 instead of $350,000 and the Warrnambool Cup will be down from $250,000 to $225,000.
"Racing Victoria has been forced to drop country prizemoney by 10 per cent and city prizemoney by 20 percent because of the virus."
O'Connor confirmed to The Standard one of the options being considered was having one day of all jumps races at the event.
"The program is being revised and how it finishes up we're not sure but having a day of jumps racing was one of the options on the table," he said.
"Racing Victoria and its stakeholders plus the federal and state governments are doing a wonderful job keeping racing going.
"I would say Racing Victoria is being very responsible with introducing prizemoney reductions. The industry has to come out of this so it can flourish in the future."
The Grand Annual Steeplechase and Warrnambool Cup were abandoned in 1971 after heavy rain on the Thursday morning and the carnival was not run between 1942 and 1946 because of the Second World War.
O'Connor said last week it was disappointing the public could not attend the races, but the safety of people was more important.
"Unfortunately, like many other large events, the club has had to make the hard decision," he said.
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