Changes for this year’s July Racing Carnival

Lynne Mowbray |

The Clarence River Jockey Club (CRJC) held their official launch of the July Racing Carnival at the Kensei Club dinner, at the CRJC on Saturday night.

CRJC Executive Officer Michael Beattie announced some changes, which will be introduced to this year’s carnival.

“There are two major changes to the carnival this year,” Mr Beattie said.

“Westlawn Day will no longer run on a mid-week date on the Thursday, the week before the Grafton Cup. It’s been moved forward, to the previous Sunday (30 June).

“I think that provides a unique opportunity for people in the valley to come to the races; and the reason that it is so unique is that it’s a major race day, on a weekend – and it’s free to come.

“Westlawn Investments sponsorship includes free entry for everybody to come and even though we moved from a mid-week date back to a Sunday, we were happy to keep that particular promotion in place and I think that that’s a great opportunity for people to come to the carnival without putting their hand in their pocket – so I see that as a major change.

“The other major change is that we believed that we needed to streamline the fashion to some degree, because we had a situation where we had fashion on Westlawn Day, fashion on South Grafton Cup day, fashion on Grafton Cup day and fashion on Maclean Cup day and the reality is that it spread it too thinly.

“So what we decided to do this year is that the major fashion events will be held on Westlawn Day with a ‘black and gold’ theme and that will include kids fashion, which will move to Westlawn Day. That’s a very important change and then all the other major fashion will be on Grafton Cup day.

“The reason that we’ve gone that way, is that all the feedback that we were receiving from those people who have been participating in fashion over the years, is that in reality, they wanted to wear their best outfits on Grafton Cup day; and we needed to move our biggest fashion to Grafton Cup day.

“If you don’t listen to what your customers are telling you when you’re in business, then you’re going to fail.

“So we’ve listened. We’ve made the change and we’ll move forward with that this year,” he said.

2019 July Carnival