51 Francis Tozer won the first Novel Race on his mare Merrymaid, by Mariner, which stood at Tozer’s Wangoom Park stud. Merrymaid had won the Amateur Turf Club Plate earlier in the day. 150 YEARS AGO On the morning of Wednesday 15 March 1876 the people of Warrnambool enthusiastically welcomed the Governor, His Excellency Sir George Bowen, who arrived by steamer for his first visit to Warrnambool. Prior to the first event at the Amateur Turf Club races His Excellency officially opened the new grandstand. That building, as subsequently extended, remains in use 150 years later as the racecourse’s public grandstand. That evening the Governor attended the Amateur Turf Club dinner, along with about 60 other gentlemen. The annual meeting of the Warrnambool Racing Club took place over the following two days. At this time the WRC held the Annual (March) Races, at which the first Warrnambool Cup was run in 1873, and the Winter Steeplechase Meeting, at which the first Warrnambool Handicap Steeplechase (Grand Annual) was run in 1872. By the late 1870s the WRC was in a parlous financial state due to the fact it carried a large debt on the new grandstand, staged two feature race meetings each season, and had a very small membership. This led to the WRC deciding to in effect merge the Annual Races and the Winter Steeplechase Meeting. With that, in 1881 what we now know as the May Carnival was born, with three days of racing with the WRC racing on the first and third days and amateurs occupying the middle day. The WATC raced on the middle day of the May Carnival for the last time in 1962 and since then the carnival has been conducted entirely by the WRC. The amateurs raced in December 1962 and held their final meeting on Saturday 28 December 1963, drawing the final curtain on what was then one of the oldest turf institutions in Victoria. LAST YEAR The Cunning Fox scored a convincing win in the Galleywood Hurdle for training partnership Patrick and Michelle Payne. Tom Ryan was in great form at last year’s carnival with a double on Wednesday; The Cunning Fox in the Galleywood and Jekyll’n’Hyde in the BM120 Steeplechase, followed by victory on Grand Annual day on Loft in the Champion Novice Hurdle. Mark McNamara: April 2026
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy ODA1NTI=