Musselburgh lose Easter fixture after funding mix-up

Musselburgh's general manager Bill Farnsworth has admitted his disappointment after confirming the cancellation of next year's Easter Sunday fixture due to a lack of funding.

The popular meeting, scheduled for March 27, will not take place in 2016 following the loss of Horserace Betting Levy Board (HBLB) funding. This came about when Musselburgh failed to access the HBLB bidding process for fixture funding which took place on September 25.

Farnsworth felt it was better not to race at all than cut back on the quality of racing and entertainment, but hopes the meeting will return in 2017.

Farnsworth said: "It's very disappointing, but it's not anybody's fault really. It's just been a case of a sequence of events going against us.

"We ended up not getting access to the bidding process for funding, which would have meant us taking a £35,000 to £40,000 hit.

"It was then a question of how we could reduce expenditure and the prize-money would have been the easy one. We could probably save somewhere between £15,000 to £20,000 by running Class 6 races with the minimum value, but we didn't really want to go down that road.

"The costs for racing on Easter Sunday are quite high and we didn't really want to cut back on the entertainment. We didn't want to have a nice day with lots of families and children coming to the racecourse, only to find it wasn't as good as usual.

"On balance we felt it was better to be up front about the situation and, regrettably, racing won't happen on Easter Sunday next year.

"We'll now look forward to 2017. It is a racecourse fixture in the calendar and it's been cleared with the BHA."