Warrnambool Greyhound Racing club to offer free race names to community groups, businesses

The club is offering south-west organisations free race names to promote their business, club or group on the back of more race meetings scheduled to run across the next three months.

Meetings will run twice a week through until February, with a new weekly Monday meeting to join its traditional Thursday night timeslot.

The club's famous seaside festival - which begins in late December - will run as normal with three meetings a week.

Warrnambool Greyhound Racing Club manager Craig Monigatti said the initiative offered the club the chance to give back to the community.

"It's just a small thing we can do. We'll have an extra meeting and there are then 12 extra races that don't have an allocation to be named after our existing sponsors," he said.

"We know businesses and sporting groups have had a pretty tough year and it's a small thing we can do to give back a bit."

Monigatti was hopeful crowds could return to meetings in the near future. The club's biggest summer festival typically draws the largest audiences of the year.

He said race meetings had been closed to the community for the past seven months due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We're certainly working towards that," Monigatti said.

"We're waiting on some direction. We're strictly essential workers being staff and trainers at the moment but hopefully that'll be able to change soon.

"We'll wait on the direction from the state government. We're ready to go as soon as we can."

For more information on free race names head to www.warrnambool.grv.org.au or email cmonigatti@grv.org.au.

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