Racing: Trentham meeting abandoned due to atrocious weather

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The Wellington Steeples and Hurdles will both be held at Hastings on Thursday after today's Trentham meeting was abandoned because of atrocious weather.

The Trentham meeting was called off after over 60mls of rain fell in the area in a 24-hour period before scratching time (7.30am) this morning, which resulted in pools of water near the racing surface.

The gale force winds also pushed small sections of the running rail over.

With the weather forecast for the region not great for the rest of the week the meeting has been abandoned with Wellington's two biggest jumping races moved to Hastings this week, with a slight reduction in the distance for the hurdles.

"It is very gutting for us," said WRC president Wayne Guppy.

"Our hospitality areas were sold out for the day, which is not easy to achieve in Wellington in winter so it will be a real blow financially for the club.

"We resigned ourselves pretty quickly to losing the two big jumps because they have to be held soon so the fit into the horse's programmes.

"It is a shame to end our season like this because this was our last meeting but we will look forward to the new season now. But we had a great Cup carnival so we had a good season overall."

The abandonment of the meeting left Ruakaka as the only meeting of any of the three codes in New Zealand on Saturday.