Wednesday, September 22, 2004
ARENA LEISURE'S ALL-WEATHER RACING GOES FROM STRENGTH TO STRENGTH
The 2004/5 all-weather season from Arena Leisure's three tracks, Lingfield Park, Wolverhampton and Southwell, gets under way on Monday 8th of November with close to £5 million in prize money on offer over the winter months.
In addition Arena Leisure are delighted to have renewed their sponsorship arrangement with Littlewoods Bet Direct, for the fourth consecutive year.
Running from early November to the end of March, the all-weather season culminates at Lingfield Park on Saturday 19th March with the £275,000 Liitlewoods Bet Direct Winter Derby meeting. This is followed by the all-weather awards dinner when 2003 champion jockey Ian Mongan, and winning track trainers, Gary Moore, Paul Blockley and Gay Kelleway will be looking to repeat last season's success and to claim their share of the £80,000 in cash prizes to be won.
Arena Leisure have this week mailed their 2004/5 all-weather programme book to owners and trainers, Ian Renton Director of Racing said "Our annual publication is always very well received by owners and trainers and it is designed to assist their forward planning throughout the season. We are very grateful to Littlewoods Bet Direct for their continued magnificent support. and we are particularly pleased that prize money levels across our three all-weather tracks has risen from under £3 million in the 2001 season to close to £5 million this term."
Continued Renton "We have a very impressive schedule of Feature races with minimum values of £10,000 added to stakes and we have introduced flexibility into our Class 1 handicaps rated 86-100 in that horses rated above 100 may still enter and run with their weight being set in accordance with their handicap rating."
The second European all-weather series takes place in five European countries, England, France, Germany, Italy and Sweden in 2005 with a E250,000 bonus for winning all five of the major all-weather races. In addition to the bonuses and prize money of E350, 000 a minimum travel allowance of E1,000 will be offered to any foreign trained horse not placed first, second or third in a race. The showpiece of the series - the Littlewoods Bet Direct Winter Derby takes place at Lingfield Park on 19th March.
Following Arena Leisure and BSkyB's June re-launch of At The Races dedicated racing channel, all races will be shown free-to-air on Sky Digital Channel 415, Telewest 534 and ntl 908.
For old articles (from 1st March 2000) go to the Newslink
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