The unseasonal weather which brought with it at times torrential rain and flooding, may have seen the project take a little longer than expected, but the Richmond track will officially reopen on Friday, May 13 following its extensive upgrade.
The last meeting at Richmond was held back on February 11 and while it had been hoped that the track would only be out of action for 6-8 weeks, work has now been completed on the upgrade and trialling, along with testing of the new lighting system, will commence from next Monday.
The Richmond club has scheduled more than 200 trials to take place on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of next week, before the first race meeting is held on the following Friday evening.
Among the work conducted at Richmond was track reshaping for better and safer geometry and transitioning of running surface, track sand surface replacement, and new dual carriage lure rail and post system to cater for a Safe Chase remote lure and a cable lure.
Two new adjusted starting positions were put in place, moving the old 535m start to 520m and the 330m start to 320m.
Adjustments were made to the existing Isolynx data and tracking system, and new LED light fittings were installed to light the track circumference. Track and infrastructure cosmetic upgrades were also completed.
The track circumference at Richmond has now increased from 457m to 463m, with the new racing distances being: 320m, 520m, 401m, 622m and 722m.
The NSW Government supplied funding of almost $700,000 from the Capital Grants Program for the Richmond upgrade.
Overall $1.3 million was spent on the Richmond job, one of the bigger projects Greyhound Racing NSW has undertaken in recent years along with the Grafton track rebuild and the construction of the Richmond Straight track.
Improvements will continue at Richmond with a digital video semaphore board still to be installed.
