Participants across the State will be beneficiaries of a newly constructed calendar catering for the racing transition period following the closure of the Wentworth Park racetrack in October.
Greyhound Racing NSW (GRNSW) are announcing that from October 17 following the final race meeting at Wentworth Park the night before, participants will reap an extra $45,000 a week in prizemoney spread across all tracks.
As announced earlier today, the new schedule will see city class racing move to Gosford and as a bonus, not only will Gosford race for city class prizemoney, but an additional $720,000 will be diverted into those meetings from October 17, through to the end September next year.
This will mean participants will race for an extra $15,000 in prizemoney a week, which as a result will see NSW surpass all other greyhound racing jurisdictions in providing the most prizemoney at their regular city class meeting.
Gosford will also take the Thursday night slot which will be vacated by Wentworth Park and race for provincial prizemoney, reduced from provincial plus prizemoney.
Accompanying this decision is an announcement that the reduced Thursday prizemoney will be distributed to all provincial 421m+ races across NSW, seeing an additional $30,000 a week - or the equivalent of $1.56 million per annum - spread to all participants.
“Following the news around the earlier departure from Wentworth Park’s we will begin a transition period for the sport,” GRNSW Chief Executive Officer Steve Griffin said.
“What we deemed best for the industry was to increase prizemoney at our major weekly meeting on a Saturday night and continue to treat it as our weekly showpiece, and see participants race at Gosford for more prizemoney than any other State.
“But at the same time we wanted to put a strategy in place to benefit all participants with the increase in prizemoney across the board around the State.
“We feel that this gives our participants the best of both worlds while we move forward during this period.”
Further changes to the schedule will see Bulli move from Tuesday twilight to Tuesday evenings, while Gosford on Tuesday moves from the night slot to a country meeting held in the twilight slot.
The purpose of this change is to mitigate impact of racing at Gosford on Thursdays and Saturdays and The Gardens on Fridays and Saturdays.
Bulli was considered as an alternative for the Wentworth Park Thursday race meeting however it was determined that the impact of an additional race meeting at Bulli on racing in the Southern region, particularly Goulburn on a Friday and the second meeting on a Tuesday at Bulli, would be a significant risk.
The first Metropolitan City prizemoney meeting to be conducted at Gosford will be on Saturday October 17, 2026 while the first Thursday Provincial race meeting to be conducted at Gosford will be on Thursday October 22, 2026.
