The cause of the power dip at the premier Hollywoodbets Durban July at the weekend remains a mystery and is being investigated. Gold Circle has issued an apology after a jockey protest led to the final three races being abandoned.
Gold Circle organisers of Saturday’s Hollywoodbets Durban July says people who had placed bets on the last three races that were cancelled, will get a full refund. Gold Circle’s Stephen Marshall says there was a drop in power which mainly affected the flood lights. He says this resulted in jockeys staging a protest, saying it was unsafe for them to ride. Marshall says they are investigating what led to the power drop as they had been assured by the eThekwini Municipality that they will not experience power cuts.
“As far as punters and those races it is a full refund. The races were not done, everyone who did have a bet on those races will receive a full refund. With regards to the investigation, it is more understanding why we lost power at a critical stage when we had an agreement or an arrangement with the municipality months prior and then a confirmation again in the day prior that all was in order, we wouldn’t lose power what actually transpired. We had a drop in power. It did come back but with the halogen flood lights unfortunately they take about 20 minutes to cool down before you can turn them on again that happened twice and that put doubts into the jockeys’ minds whether that could happen during the running of a race,” says Marshall.
Marshall added that the cancellation of the three races put a damper on the overall earnings.
“From a betting perspective we were tracking twelve percent above our previous year, which was very positive, unfortunately with the three races that were abandoned that took us backwards a lot because obviously we couldn’t generate any turnover during those three races. Three races out of twelve that is 25% of our races on the day that was a big disappointment for us. We were positive that the lead up showed a big bounce back for this event with regards to the crowd. I think we were way up from last year as well round about 40 000 mark this year, those are figures from Ticket Pro,” Marshall added.
The heavy rains earlier last week in Durban also hindered some of the logistics on race day.
“We were struck with a number of challenges, firstly the weather on Tuesday as we all know was something out of this world. We had a tornado close by, we had 112 mm of rain recorded here at Hollywoodbets Greyville which put a lot of things and made them very challenging, parking on the entry, and getting the sponsors marquees getting up a week before that was interrupted. The fact that we got to the race day with everything set up was a miracle in itself it was great team effort,” Marshall explains.
EThekwini Municipality spokesperson Lindiwe Khuzwayo says in a statement the power dip at Greyville Race Course was not load shedding related. She says the city will assist in investigating the cause.
