Three of the eight races which were to be held at Saturday's abandoned Caulfield meeting have been rescheduled to Wednesday's Sandown program.Caulfield was called off due to a deluge of rain overnight which caused the power to go out and damaged the judge's box and race day facilities in the grandstand.The Listed Chairman's Stakes for two-year-olds, the Listed Manfred Stakes for three-year-olds and The New Saturday Age Cup are the transferred events to the Hillside meeting which will now hold 10
Three of the eight races which were to be held at Saturday's abandoned Caulfield meeting have been rescheduled to Wednesday's Sandown program.
Caulfield was called off due to a deluge of rain overnight which caused the power to go out and damaged the judge's box and race day facilities in the grandstand.
The Listed Chairman's Stakes for two-year-olds, the Listed Manfred Stakes for three-year-olds and The New Saturday Age Cup are the transferred events to the Hillside meeting which will now hold 10 races.
Distances for those races have been amended with the Chairman's Stakes over 1000m (was 1100m), the Manfred Stakes over 1300m (was 1200m) and The New Saturday Age Cup over 1800m (was 2000m).
The Chairman's will be race eight, the Manfred race nine and The New Saturday Age Cup race 10.
The fields, including barriers and weights, remain unchanged and all scratchings have been reinstated.
Acceptances for the remainder of the program will be taken at 9am (AEDT) on Monday.
The Listed WJ Adams Stakes (1000m) for open sprinters has not been rescheduled as those horses have the option of running in next Saturday's Group Three Rubiton Stakes (1100m) at Caulfield.
Melbourne Racing Club (MRC) track manager Jason Kerr said 125mm of rain had fallen on the course between 6pm on Friday and 8am on Saturday at which time the meeting was called off.
"We've got some fairly major flooding and water damage in the grandstand areas which basically renders the grandstand and our judge's box and race day facilities out of action for the day," Kerr said.
Racing Victoria stewards were to inspect the track at 10am but Kerr said that due to the water damage, combined with the track conditions and the weather to come, the decision not to race was inevitable.
"It was a fairly straight-forward decision once we'd seen the damage in the stands," he said.
The Caulfield track had been rated a heavy (10) following the rain after being a good (3) on Friday.
MRC chief executive Alisdair Robertson said the power had gone out in the grandstand in the early hours of the morning due to water seepage.
Acting chief steward Allan Reardon arrived at Caulfield at 6am after receiving a call from Kerr saying that 110mm had fallen on the track overnight.
"We put two horses over it and the riders said it was very, very heavy. They thought it was safe but they had a concern about the home turn," he said.
Reardon said there was water filling into the divots and when another 15mm fell by 8am, and with more rain to come, safety was going to be an issue.
On learning of the power being out and the water damage to on-course facilities, the decision to call off the meeting was virtually done for him.
The Saturday provincial meeting at Kyneton and picnic meeting at Buchan were also abandoned due to heavy rain as was Sunday's picnic meeting at Healesville.
The Woodend Cup meeting at Kyneton was abandoned on Saturday morning after the track received over 60mm of rain overnight.
It was to have been Kyneton's first race meeting since the racecourse was flooded in mid-January.
Stewards will hold a track inspection at Wangaratta on Sunday ahead of Monday's meeting.
The Wangaratta track was in the heavy range on Saturday after receiving 100mm of rain over the last seven days, including 60mm overnight, with further rain forecast for Saturday night.