All-Star Mile scheduled to go ahead

Giles Thompson, Racing Victoria chief executive, says racing will go ahead at Caulfield.

The Caulfield race meeting featuring the $5 million All-Star Mile is scheduled to go ahead as planned.

Racing Victoria said on Friday morning the government had not directed them to stop mass gatherings at this time amid concerns over coronavirus.

The Australian Formula One Grand Prix in Melbourne is scheduled to to go ahead this weekend but the public will be barred.

“We’re continuing to monitor the situation,” RV said.

RV chief executive Giles Thompson told RSN927 Friday night’s Alister Clark Stakes meeting at The Valley and Saturday’s feature All-Star Mile meeting would go ahead.

“The decision is to race tonight and to race tomorrow,” Thompson said.

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“We’ve been keeping a very close contact and information from the government health authorities. They’re the ones that we’re taking the advice from and their advice is clear. And that is that people don’t need to take actions limiting their movement but they should take good hygiene measures to reduce risk.

“That means that mass gatherings are still OK.

“And therefore we see no reason to not race and continue to race with crowds until that advice changes.

“So Moonee Valley is on tonight, Caulfield is on tomorrow and we expect to continue to race until if that advice changes.”

He said there were contingencies to conduct race meetings in Victoria without spectators if the advice surrounding mass gatherings changes.

“We’ve been scenario planning around this for a few weeks now and the plan is if, and it’s a big if at this point still, the government advice changes and we can’t have mass gatherings, ie crowds at races, we will seek to continue to race,” Thompson said.

“We believe that that’s what the participants want to do. They need to race to earn and we are very keen to keep that happening.”