Champion pacer Leap To Fame will headline the best harness horses from Australia and New Zealand to chase two exciting and massive new bonuses on Victoria\u2019s feature summer races.<\/p>\n
In a huge boost for the sport, Harness Racing Victoria (HRV) today unveiled a $1.5 million in bonuses \u2013 $1 million for pacers and $500,000 for trotters \u2013 across the six biggest weeks of the Summer of Glory.<\/p>\n
Although there are six legs in the bonus series, the $1 million will be paid on any pacer who can win four legs (including the Hunter Cup) and $500,000 to any trotter who can four legs (including the Great Southern Star).<\/p>\n
Leap To Fame\u2019s leviathan Queenslander owner Kevin Seymour said the move would guarantee Victorians see more of the all-time richest Australasian pacer racing in the state.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is sensational news for harness racing, not just in Victoria, but in this part of the world,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt will give Victorians the opportunity to see lots of Leap To Fame, but will also bring the best open-class pacers in this part of the world together in Victoria.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe impact it will have on those big country cups is massive. We love taking Leap To Fame out to the people and this is even more incentive to do so.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019ll be a big step towards a resurgence for the sport in Victoria and it\u2019s a huge credit to all involved.\u201d<\/p>\n
HRV CEO Matt Isaacs said the bonuses would further cement Victoria as the \u201cgo-to destination\u201d in summer.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been our goal to make the Summer of Glory unmissable,\u201d he said. \u201cFirst the team worked with our country clubs to totally reshape where and when we ran our biggest country cups and, in many cases, boosted their prize money.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo then throw some serious and achievable bonus money around them is the icing on the cake.<\/p>\n
\u201cHunter Cup night will already be huge, but imagine the extra layer of having a pacer and\/or trotter going for those big bonuses in the Hunter Cup and Great Southern Star.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to thank the country clubs we\u2019ve worked with to bring this all together. It\u2019s been a real team effort.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re looking forward to seeing the best horses in this part of the world, pacers and trotters, coming to Victoria at the start of next year and, importantly, racing a few times, not just once.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople love seeing the best horses race against each other and that\u2019s what this is designed to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
NSW set a precedent for such bonuses last year, but ir was daunting as it required a horse to win all five legs in the series to win the $1 million bonus. Mighty stayer Swayzee went agonizingly close to banking $1 million with four wins and a second. He still earned a $500,000 bonus.<\/p>\n
The Victorian bonus series starts at Bendigo on January 10 with the $75,000 Group 1 Bendigo Cup and the $75,000 Group 1 Maori Mile.<\/p>\n
It moves to Shepparton (January 17), Ballarat (January 24), Cranbourne (January 31) and Kilmore (February 7).<\/p>\n
The Summer of Glory culminates with the stellar Hunter Cup card at Melton on February 14.<\/p>\n
SUMMER OF GLORY \u2013 BONUS SERIES LEGS<\/p>\n
January 10: $75,000 Gp2 Bendigo Cup (pacers)\/$75,000 Gp1 Maori Mile (trotters)<\/p>\n
January 17: $50,000 Gp3 Shepparton Gold Cup\/ $30,000 Gp3 Shepparton Trotters\u2019 Cup<\/p>\n
January 24: $100,000 Gp2 Ballarat Cup\/$75,000 Gp1 Ballarat Trotters\u2019 Cup<\/p>\n
January 31: $150,000 Gp1 Cranbourne Cup\/$75,000 Gp1 Cranbourne Trotters\u2019 Cup<\/p>\n
February 7: $150,000 Gp1 Kilmore Cup\/$75,000 Gp1 Kilmore Trotters\u2019 Cup<\/p>\n
February 14: $250,000 Gp1 Hunter Cup\/$250,000 Gp1 Great Southern Star<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Champion pacer Leap To Fame will headline the best harness horses from Australia and New Zealand to chase…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182465,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[3004,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-182464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-racing","tag-racing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182464\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}