Racecourse anger as South Africa's biggest meeting is abandoned due to power outage

An early abandonment of South Africa's biggest race meeting because of two power cuts on Saturday has prompted the racecourse to lock horns with the mayor's office and demand an "urgent investigation", with the track blaming the city for significant revenue losses due to the early finish of the Durban July fixture.

Greyville's floodlights were taken out just as runners for the tenth race were on the course and a full power cut lasted 20 minutes and a second occurred moments after power had been restored. Jockeys refused to ride in the final three races due to uncertainty of the light and, in a statement, the racecourse apologised and called for an investigation from the eThekwini Municipality, the local head of electricity, which has been blamed for the incident.

Forced power cuts through the winter are a controversial issue in South Africa – known as load shedding – and the racetrack had to seek exemption of a power outage from the local council in order to stage the R5million (£210,562) contest, won this year by Winchester Mansion. Yet the city's government has said the cut was not caused by load shedding but a fault, and said it was limited to the racecourse rather than the region.

Steve Marshall, events manager for racecourse group Gold Circle, told IOL: "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'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. We're hoping that the city will share the result of that investigation with the public as soon as it becomes available."

Electricity group refuses to take responsibility

The city's head of electricity said it would help in the investigation but refused to take responsibility for the issues. The power outages also caused frustrations for the crowd of 45,000 and also cut out while a performer was on stage.

Maxwell Mthembu, from the eThekwini Municipality, said to IOL: "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."

Hollywoodbets, sponsors of the Durban July and Greyville racecourse, expressed frustration over events at the fixture, which was watched by a crowd of more than 45,000 – many of whom travel from across the continent.

Brand manager Devin Heffer said: "Where focus should have been on the July winner Winchester Mansion, it was overshadowed by the premature ending to the race meeting. The floodlight situation was unacceptable and negatively affected all racing stakeholders, attendees, and sponsors."

The three races not staged were worth R390,000 (£16,400).

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