Yarmouth are considering paying travelling expenses for this year’s East Anglian Derby writes Floyd Amphlett.
Promoter Simon Franklin said: “Totepool have confirmed their sponsorship again this year and have put a bit more in the pot. I am not sure that increasing the winner’s prize beyond last year’s £15,000 will make any difference to the quality of the entry, but we are always conscious of the travelling costs for visiting trainers. It is too early to announce figures, but we are considering going that route and I hope to chat to a few trainers and find out their views.”
The 462m decider is due to take place on Wednesday September 16.
Overall, it has been a poor first half of the year for the Caister Stadium.
Franklin said: “This area is heavily affected by the oil industry and countless local jobs have been lost as cutbacks kick in across all sectors. We have felt the knock-on of that. We have held a Group-On meeting to boost the numbers, but that is far from ideal.”
On the racing side, the track have recently staged a series of five-runner races, despite NOT being faced with a runner shortage.
Franklin said: “I think there are around 298 dogs on the strength, which theoretically is more than enough for three meetings per week. But for whatever reason which is completely beyond me, we are critically short of railers in the lower grades. We have wide runners not getting races so we are staging five-runner fields just to accommodate them.”
On the graded strength, Ray Pleasants’ Urban Road (Westmead Hawk-Tullig Paula, Jan 12) is the narrow vote as track champion having won his last three A1s with a best recent time of 27.99.
His most pressing rival is the John Mullins trained Soviet Paddy who was twice beaten by the Pleasants runner over four bends, but turned the tables in D1 and has since recorded 27.94.
