The extensive flood damage to Forbury Park has left the harness racing club with too much to do before a scheduled meeting on Thursday.
Instead, the club will run a meeting at Gore on Saturday, after negotiations with Harness Racing New Zealand and Southern Harness Racing.
Due to flood waters taking some time to recede, a full inspection of the track by Harness Racing New Zealand national track and venue inspector John Denton, Forbury Park Trotting Club general manager John Ayoub and track manager Ken McFarlane was only able to be completed yesterday.
Weather reports for the coming days were borderline in terms of starting remedial work on the track, which sustained serious gouging in parts.
Ayoub said there was ''bad rutting'' right out to three-quarters of the way up the track in some parts and the damage was ''substantial''.
''We're geared up to start that remedial work early next week,'' he said.
Until measurements and tests were done to determine what materials would be needed, it was hard to establish how long the weather-dependent work would take, Ayoub said.
''So we made the decision that we won't be ready for this Thursday,'' Ayoub.
A decision on the meeting was to be made tomorrow, but Ayoub said the decision was brought forward to give industry participants plenty of time to adapt.
A further update on the track would be available on Monday.
The Harness Racing Waikato meeting scheduled for Sunday, June 14 has now been moved to Thursday night to fill the gap in one of New Zealand harness racing's key export slots.
