Hawkesbury Race Club's historic feature, the Listed Rowley Mile, will later this month carry prizemoney of $150,000, an increase of $50,000 on last year.
Run on August 24, the race is a feature on the Hawkesbury calendar, often the starting point for many of the spring racing season’s big guns.
We have shifted the date of the race around over the years to make it an important race on the winter calendar and the increase in prize money will help this.
Some of our other feature races, including The Listed Lander Toyota Ladies Day Cup, run on VRC Oaks Day in November, are also under consideration for prizemoney increases.
We are in discussions with Racing NSW regarding other feature races, including our spring feature on Oaks Day and will then look to our Stand Alone again in autumn.
Returns to owners is a high priority, but we are about to also build on course stables and our Polytrack, so these have to be weighed into our budgetary considerations in this financial year.
This year's Rowley Mile meeting will be a precursor to some fantastic spring racing at the Clarendon track.
We are again looking forward to our Spring Saturday September 2 race meeting and then our attention turns to Pink Finns Charity Race Day later in September, which is one of the club's main charity race days for the year.
In the last month at our race meetings, we have helped raise almost $10,000 for the Hawkesbury Living Cancer Trust.
Greg Rudolph is the CEO at Hawkesbury Race Club.