Change of Racing Days and Post Times at Hastings

Starting on Sunday, August 2nd we are changing our racing days from Monday and Tuesdays at 2:30 to Thursdays and Sundays at 4:30pm. We are moving dates and times in an attempt to get more online wagering not only locally, but from all over North America.

Our racing funding normally comes from three sources. Our slot agreement would normally be 42% of our income. With the casinos at both Fraser Downs and Hastings currently closed, we have zero income from casinos. The Two Race books at Hastings and Fraser Downs both closed at the moment we are receiving zero income from these two facilities that normally would provide approximately $2.5 million to our allocation.

TBC currently is our only source of income from online wagering and with only 3 of the TBC outlets open for business we are receiving only about $200,000 per month from these outlets. This currently is our only source of income.

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So as you can see we are currently operating on less then 25% of our normal allocation and the racing associations are trying to stretch every dollar to its best use to make it thru 2020.

Because of some savings in other areas we are raising the purses for $6250 claimers to $8500 and $8000 claimers to $9000 effective on August 2nd

We are trying to put as much money in our owners’ hands as possible thru these hard times of this coronavirus; hopefully things will change to a new normal soon.

The Hastings horse owners should be applauded as they have stuck like glue and kept several hundred trainers, grooms, exercise riders, jockeys, etc., employed thru all of these very unusual times. Enough can’t be said about our loyal owners other than thank you very much from the entire backstretch at Hastings.

The racing associations have also increased the some stakes races to $50,000 effective August 2nd. It should be noted that several of our owners have stepped up to the plate and financed just about 100% of our limited stakes schedule. Without these gracious owners we wouldn’t have much of a stakes schedule in 2020. A big thank you to those owners.

Entry Day for the new dates will be Wednesday for Sundays and Sundays for Thursday.

Mondays will once again be the dark days.

Clockers will man their stations on Thursday, Friday, Saturdays and Sundays.

The starting gate will be available on the same days for training: Thursdays, Fridays Saturdays and Sundays until further notice.

The front side will be open for Owners on clockers days on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 6:00am sharp.

The racing association met with the Hastings management group on Thursday morning to discuss the growing complaints about the starting gate during live racing. Management have promised to look into this serious situation and make changes where necessary.

Hopefully some of these changes will at least help even a small bit until we beat this virus and return to some sort of reality soon.