There had been some suggestions in the weeks leading up to the inaugural meeting yesterday week and the grand opening on Sunday that a few sections of the track were soft underfoot for horses.

The situation echoes the problems that plagued the Mount Panorama road surface during the Bathurst 1000 less than a fortnight ago.

In the wake of the Sunday meeting, the Bathurst Harness Racing Club (BHRC) had been confident of solidifying some of the affected areas and getting them up to scratch by the time yesterday’s program started.

Just before lunchtime, however, it became apparent that it wasn’t going to be a simple job.

“There were some issues on Sunday. It was soft in a few places and particularly in the front of the course, the sprint lane and also about three-wide from the inside of the track,” BHRC chief executive officer Danny Dwyer said.

“We had trials there on Monday night and there weren’t any real problems, but we went to start a bit of remedial work today and realised fairly quickly that the job was going to be a lot bigger than we anticipated.

“The decision was made as early as possible to call the meeting off rather than risk the health of the horses and drivers.”

Any track surface that has too much give in it will endanger horses running on it at high speed, and if one of the standard-breds was to snap a leg due to the state of the track, it would be an immediate black mark.

The new facility had, until now, received overwhelmingly positive feedback.

The consensus among the pacing community has so far been that the venue is set to become one of the best of its kind in the state, if not the entire country.

“The danger is certainly there if a horse steps in a soft spot or a small hole; you can’t take that sort of risk,” Mr Dwyer said.

“Even if there wasn’t any physical risk, you can’t have a track that isn’t consistent and that has bias in some spots where it is rock hard and others where you are sinking into the surface.”

Harness Racing NSW made the quick decision to schedule extra races at this Saturday’s meeting in Parkes to try to ensure that as many trainers as possible can still get a race under their horses’ belts this week.

Mr Dwyer says the key now is to make sure the problem is solved as quickly as possible.

“The times that were being run on Sunday plus the feedback from the trainers and drivers was fantastic. We want to build on that good start,” he said.

“We think it can be fixed reasonably quickly and we’re confident we’ll be back racing as soon as possible, but from the club’s point of view it would have been plain irresponsible if we didn’t get this sorted out before we let people race on it again.

“It’s no-one’s fault, it is just something we’ve got to deal with.”