Naas ploughs ahead despite all-weather blow
A board meeting of Horse Racing Ireland on Monday unanimously decided that no funding could be advanced for the provision of all-weather racing at this time.
Naas and Dundalk both had hopes of being chosen for the project, but they will now have to wait longer to see whether one of them eventually gets the nod.
"We are going ahead with our own plans of widening our track to be able to hold more racing fixtures," said Naas manager Margaret McGuinness yesterday.
"This is the place where everybody believes that, from a location point of view, an all-weather track should be built.
"It is going to be an expensive project. We would certainly need financial backing to build the track.
"We have had a meeting with the executive of the HRI and discussed the financing of the project and also we need to see if it would be a viable day-to-day proposition for a racecourse such as ours."
Dundalk chief executive Jim Martin told the Racing Post: "My initial reaction is one of disappointment. We feel very strongly that we put the best proposal in the country to the HRI.
"We are prepared to work with the working group which will be set up to look at a surface capable of staging jump racing. When that surface is established we still feel we have the best facility. Hopefully something will come out of that committee within the next five or six months."
Dundalk opens for greyhound racing on November 29 and officials hoped to resume horseracing 12 months later. The track has been closed since 2001.
They had been hoping for a substantial HRI grant to further the project.
Meanwhile, Northern Ireland will stage its first Sunday race meeting on September 12 next year.
This extra date has been allocated to Down Royal, in view of the impending introduction of Sunday on-course betting in Northern Ireland.
Down Royal chairman Jim Nicholson said: "We are delighted but not surprised to receive this fixture.
"We have major plans for racing on Sundays and we would hope our Northern Ireland Festival, which ended last weekend, will have a Sunday date in 2005. This would make it a three-day affair Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
"The September 12 date will not clash with any other racing fixture in Ireland. It will be a fun and family day, but we have not yet decided on what the programme of racing will be."
Nicholson added that if the introduction of on-course betting on a Sunday was not on the statute book by next September, racing would still go ahead without betting.
"We don't visualise any difficulty with the introduction of on-course betting."
Clonmel is to stage a replacement fixture on Sunday, December 7.
