Racing abandoned for another year
GUERNSEY will go a third year without a big race meeting.
The Guernsey Race Club annual meeting unanimously voted to delay the return for a further 12 months for a combination of reasons.
Club president Trevor Gallienne said it was not a hard decision to make.
‘We won’t be racing in 2022, but we are determined to come back the year after,’ he said.
‘The course needs too much work.
‘It was an easy decision to make as there is also a lack of workforce and we also need to fundraise. We just did not have the means to put it together.’
The annual May meeting had re-established itself before the pandemic struck and the loss of Jim Jamouneau, the club’s stalwart driving force, just compounded matters.
Only last August the club had expressed determination to go ahead with the 2022 event, but they were very concerned as to the state of the course with
rabbit holes and crow damage making it look a mess and a danger.
Gallienne said then it was not just the rabbits that have caused the circuit to be in the sorry state it was.
‘It has been decimated by rabbits, but also the crows, which have ripped up the finishing straight.’
Nothing had changed in a year.
In September 2020 after walking the course with Jamouneau, Gallienne said: ‘Eighty per cent of the course is affected.
‘We are talking hundreds of rabbit holes, on top of the major crow damage to the finishing straight, which is the most important part of the course.’
He added: ‘From the swings [at Les Amarreurs] there are more rabbit holes than there is grass. It is unbelievable.’
