Horse Racing: Musselburgh boosted by extra meeting

Published on Wednesday 19 January 2011 06:03

Musselburgh have been granted a new fixture next month after losing three meetings because of the big freeze.

The East Lothian track is set to stage an additional meeting on Friday, February 11 and racecourse boss Bill Farnsworth is planning a competitive card with 30,000 in prize money.

"It's good to get this extra meeting after losing three of our original nine fixtures - and two of those we lost would have been lucrative meetings during the Christmas holidays," he said.

"But we won't make much profit from the new date as we have decided to match the 15,000 in prize money allocation we will get from the Levy Board and put on a six-race card with some decent prizes to help owners and trainers in Scotland and the north who have been badly hit by the weather."

The additional date means Musselburgh will have three jumping meetings in February, but March is a blank month before the seaside track opens its flat season with a big two-day meeting at Easter.

Farnsworth plans to introduce a new race on Easter Saturday - a 20,000 handicap sprint for three-year-olds while there will also be a valuable conditions race over the five-furlong track which regularly attracts quality horses.

The feature on Easter Sunday is the Musselburgh Gold Cup while there was also good news recently of a new 200,000 series of races for Scotland this summer.

The series will be sponsored by the leading betting exchange Betfair and will include a number of qualifiers at Scotland's three flat venues - Ayr, Hamilton and Musselburgh - with a finals day at Musselburgh in September.

Each course will stage six sprint qualifiers, six mile qualifiers and six stayers heats culminating in three 25,000 finals on the East Lothian track.