By David Nagel
The Pakenham Cup will be run under lights for the first time in its near 100-year history after the release of Racing Victoria’s (RV) new looking racing calendar for the 2023/24 season.
First won by Mount Pleasant in 1926, the Pakenham Cup has been the feature race for the Pakenham Racing Club (PRC) throughout its storied history.
The race was last run at the old track on Racecourse Road in February 2014, with Captain Fancypantz winning for local trainer Cameron Templeton.
The PRC’s new facility in Tynong conducted its first race-meeting on March 26, 2015, with that year’s cup won by the Darren Weir-trained Tooleybuc Kid in late April.
In February this year, RV announced key enhancements to the Spring Racing Carnival (SRC), which include the addition of a new Group-1 meeting that will take place a week after the famous four-day carnival at Flemington.
The new race day, designed to give the racing industry a stronger foothold in the sporting landscape in November, has resulted in several key race dates being pushed back a week.
This year, the new Thousand Guineas meeting will take place at Caulfield on Saturday 18 November, pushing the Cranbourne Cup back to 25 November.
The Zipping Classic meeting at Caulfield will now be run on 2 December, with the Ballarat Cup – usually a staple of Spring – now becoming a permanent summer fixture, to be run this year on 9 December.
While the two meetings at Caulfield – and country cups at Cranbourne and Ballarat – were set in stone, no date was fixed for the Pakenham Cup, run in the first week of December since that first instalment in 2015.
PRC Chief Executive Officer, Blair Odgers, said the club had worked closely with RV to finalise a new date.
“Put simply, changes to the spring carnival, announced in February, have had a knock-on effect to the Pakenham Cup,” Odgers said.
“We had to work out what that impact would be and we’ve been working with Racing Victoria over the last few months to work through our options.
“A couple of options were presented, including a Saturday in late-December, the 23rd, or alternatively moving it to a Thursday night.
“We decided that Thursday 29 February will be the cup date in 2024, which will give us our first Pakenham Cup under lights.
“As part of that we’ve been working through a support package with Racing Victoria that will provide some long-term benefits to the Pakenham Racing Club to run a Pakenham Cup under lights.”
Odgers said there were several key considerations that went into the decision.
“The obvious one was the commercial impact, being the ability to attract a cup crowd on a Thursday night, instead of a standalone Saturday program,” he said.
“There were also considerations regarding our funding, and the impact on wagering.
“Once we got some assurances around those items, we agreed to the change.
“Racing Victoria is very keen to progress night racing, and the Thursday night series we have been conducting now for a couple of years has been going from strength to strength.
“They were really keen to strengthen that product even further by putting the Pakenham Cup under lights.
“It just took a while to make sure we had the right commercial assurances…and they came.
“We’re comfortable with the decision, excited by the decision; it’s onwards and upwards from here.
“Night racing is our number-one asset and our number-one strength here at Pakenham so it’s great to put our premier event under lights.”
Odgers said the Pakenham Cup program would be an all-encompassing event with a high-quality support card.
“I can’t say too much at the moment, there are still some things to work through, but we’re looking at a new innovation series that will have heats, into a final, that will culminate on Pakenham Cup night,” he said.
“We also have the Sportsbet Future Stars Series, that we ran for the first time this year, which will also be a heat and final series that will lead to the Pakenham Cup.
“That’s the starting point of a number of discussions we’re having about heat and finals series that will be run on the night…but at this stage a grand final night is a good way to describe it.
“It’s going to be a lot more than just the Pakenham Cup on the night; it’s going to be the culmination of something big.”
Consideration was also made into the distance of the event, with the PRC sticking to the current 2500-metre journey.
“One of the challenges regarding a distance change, particularly under lights, is that we don’t have our 2000-metre chute, or 1200-metre chute lit…yet,” Odgers explained.
“Once those chutes are available for night racing, a discussion can then be held about the best distance for the cup.
“And one of the key considerations of moving the Pakenham Cup to that date is where the race sits from a staying perspective into the autumn.
“The Roy Higgins Quality will be four weeks after the race, which is a golden ticket into the Melbourne Cup, and the Adelaide Cup is two weeks after the Pakenham Cup.
“The Sydney Cup is six weeks after it, so it places it among some really strong interstate and local staying races.
“We’ll be very interested to see how the Pakenham Cup is used by owners and trainers in respect of those races.
“We can then assess whether that distance is best for the cup long-term, or it’s best to drop back to a middle-distance.”
Odgers agreed that a reduction in crowd numbers for a cup under lights was inevitable.
“It will be challenging from an-oncourse perspective, no doubt,” he said.
“But we do have to acknowledge that the bulk of our revenue comes from broadcast and off-course wagering, and night racing is bucking the trend and showing growth in that area.
“We need to look at ways to continue to grow that.”
