The Hawera Cup is back!

The Hawera Cup meeting, which was abandoned on February 6, has been re-scheduled.

The meeting will now be held on Wednesday, February 23 with the features being the Hawera and Taranaki Cups.

The $15,000 Hawera Cup however will be run over 2100 metres and not 3000 metres as originally scheduled.

“The club made the call on this purely to try and attract more horses," says Harness Racing New Zealand’s General Manager – Racing, Catherine McDonald.

The stake for Taranaki Cup, the day's highest rated mobile race, will be $10,000, up $1000.

“We are very pleased Hawera will get another day's racing," says McDonald, “everyone was gutted when the second day of the meeting had to be called off but we had no choice.”

Torrential rain meant the racing couldn’t go ahead and initially it wasn’t known if the congested racing calendar would allow for another date to be found.

“We and the club are delighted we have a solution to this. The Hawera club and Carey (Hobbs – Taranaki Racing Chief Executive) are doing a fantastic job and we all agree that grass track racing there must continue.”

“We look forward to them having a successful day on the 23rd,” said McDonald.