HORSHAM and District Racing Club manager Lisa Inkster has encouraged Wimmera residents to get behind this weekend’s Horsham Cup.
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The Cup has moved to its traditional Sunday date after being moved to a Friday for the past four years.
“We want the community to support this because it is the biggest cup in the region,” Ms Inkster said.
“We are also thankful for the support of the local businesses and part of the change to the Sunday was to support those businesses in their Friday trading.
“As a club we are pretty happy to be racing again on a Sunday because it was never our choice to move it to a Friday.”
The cup meeting moved in 2014 to avoid a clash with the larger Seymour Cup under instruction from Racing Victoria who ruled that country cup meetings could not be held on the same day.
The club’s president Jason Merlo said he believed the Sunday meeting would be a success.
“While we are disappointed with the decision to take away the public holiday after one year, with the support of the racing community and fantastic members and patrons, we believe our Sunday can be an outstanding success this year and in years to come,” he said.
Wimmera trainers Paul Preusker and Simon Gebert have nominated for the $60,000 Horsham Cup, with country racing legend Darren Weir having five nominations at this stage.
The final fields will be known on Thursday morning.
Our Bottino broke the track record in last year’s Horsham Cup win and has been nominated again for this year’s race.
Ms Inkster said weeks of work had gone into preparing for the big day.
“You can’t put a time on it but we have put weeks and weeks of work and the track is looking superb,” she said.
“There are some pretty big names nominated in the Cup and love having someone like Darren Weir show so much interest in the event.”
Early bird tickets are on sale for $15 and tickets at the door will cost $20.