Extended lockdown rules out racing, for the meantime

All race meetings scheduled for New Zealand over the weekend and into the early part of next week have been cancelled following the Government’s decision to extend the Alert Level 4 lockdown.

The whole country is in Alert Level 4 until midnight Tuesday. From Wednesday all areas south of Auckland will move to Level Three. Auckland and Northland will remain at Alert Level Four, pending a further review early next week.

The decision means that the harness racing meetings at Addington (Sunday and Monday) and Winton (Sunday) have all been abandoned.

The next meeting will be at Invercargill next Thursday (Sept 2), with Cambridge and Addington meetings on Friday. The Ashburton Trotting Club's meeting will be at Addington on Sunday. 

The scheduled trials at Addington next Wednesday are still going ahead, as long as Canterbury is at Alert Level Three, as expected.

Harness Racing New Zealand says it plans to run extra races where possible to try and compensate for the lost meetings in the last week or so.

In coming days we will provide an update on what Alert Level Three will mean to all in the industry.