Durban July card ends early after Greyville power cuts

South African racing staged its biggest meeting of the season on Saturday, as the 2023 Durban July was played out in front of a crowd of 45,000 racegoers. Winchester Mansion beat See It Again in a barn-storming finish to the feature, the full result of which can be found here on our website.

In the build-up to the Durban July, the festivities were disrupted by untimely powercut. In-fact, many viewers looking to stream the race online missed the Durban July due to technical difficulties at Greyville.

Soon after the Durban July finished, Greyville suffered another power cut. It was then that organisers decided to abandon the final three races on the card, meaning the Listed Compendium Insurance Brokers Handicap, the Brentford FC - FM 86 Handicap and the Gagasi FM - Mr 88 Handicap will have to take place at a later date.

Electrical suppliers eThekwini Municipality refused to take responsibility for the issues, with spokesman Maxwell Mthembu releasing the following statement.

"I want to make this clear, there was no load shedding scheduled for that area. Greyville and the surroundings were excluded from load shedding until midnight.

"As the electricity department, we didn't even get a call to say that there were electricity problems in Greyville. The neighbours that are supplied by the same system as Greyville were not affected by any outages."

Steve Marshall of Gold Circle was dismayed at the goings on at Greyville, lamenting the "reputational damage" caused by the abandonment of the Durban July day card.

"We've been conducting night racing at Hollywoodbets Greyville for more than 25 years and have never experienced a ten-second power cut during a race meeting in all that time, let alone experiencing this twice in less than an hour."

"The lost betting revenue on these races, as well as the lost sponsorship revenue, on the sponsored races that were not run results in millions of rands in lost revenue for Gold Circle. Not to mention the reputational damage that has been caused by these factors that were out of our control."

"We're hoping that the city will share the result of that investigation with the public as soon as it becomes available."