October
MayTAB meeting, non-TAB money
On Sunday April 25, Racing Victoria Limited (RVL) conducted a race meeting at Yarra Valley.
The meeting was covered by the TAB and broadcast by the electronic media (Sky 2). However, it had been originally programmed as a non-TAB meeting.
Some trainers/owners did not know until acceptance time that the status of the meeting had been changed.
The prizemoney was not increased to reflect the change to a full-blown TAB meeting and the financial benefits that would flow to RVL from the TAB betting on the meeting and the TV coverage of same.
As a consequence, trainers and owners raced their stock for gross prizemoney of $7000 (per race) instead of the $12,000 normally allocated for races at provincial/country meetings covered by the TAB.
Owners/trainers were, therefore, unfairly and unreasonably deprived of $30,000 in prizemoney because of the failure of RVL to abide by its own policy.
I prefer to believe that this was an oversight by Racing Victoria and that those who provided horses for the meeting will be duly reimbursed.
supplied