Ireland’s racing community remains confused and concerned about the resumption of action.
Having conducted ten meetings successfully “behind closed doors” before the current lockdown began, Irish Racing listened expectantly, to Taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s address last Friday, anticipating the green-light for racing in the near future.
But only golf and tennis were included in the activities set to be re-opened on May 18, with racing, apparently, included in the ‘behind closed doors’ sports scheduled for a June 29 resumption.
Because racing comes under the remit of the Department of Agriculture, it was assumed that the May date would apply.
But, four days later, everyone remains in the dark, with no clarification of Irish racing’s status forthcoming from either the Government or HRI.
Over recent weeks, the messages emanating from Irish racing’s governing body suggested that a return to action was imminent, with the Irish 1,000 and 2,000 Guineas, due to be run on the weekend of May 23-24, optimistically, holding their slot on the fixture list.
The consensus of opinion seems to be that either HRI misunderstood the messages being received from Government sources or that it was misled by Government.
The prospect of not having racing here until June 29 would be nothing short of a disaster for the industry.
