Newcastle Jockey Club is hopeful of maintaining prizemoney levels for the its spring carnival features, including the $200,000 Newcastle Cup on September 18.
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The club was looking at potential cuts to prizemoney for the September 18-19 carnival given the fallout from COVID-19 and the potential loss of crowds.
However, the feature program remains almost unchanged and prizemoney has been maintained, including in the group 3 Newcastle Cup and the $160,000 group 3 Cameron Handicap and Tibbie Stakes.
The NJC has boosted prizemoney itself in recent years to push the Newcastle Cup to $200,000 and chief executive Matt Benson said "everything is staying the same".
"We were certainly exploring options to reduce it, but at this stage we're hoping the crowds will be back and we can maintain prizemoney," Benson said.
One change is the switch of the $40,000 Hurricane Handicap (900m) from the Saturday meeting to the feature Friday program.
It adds to a Friday card which lost the group 3 Spring Stakes last year when it was moved to the inaugural $1 million The Hunter standalone meeting Saturday in November.
"When we lost the Spring Stakes to the Hunter, the Friday meeting got a bit thin, so we moved the Hurricane and that's about the only change," Benson said.
Meanwhile, top Newcastle trainer Kris Lees moved to 1999 career wins with the victory of Controlthewitness at Gosford on Thursday. It was the 187th winner of the season in NSW for Lees, who still leads Chris Waller by 12.5 victories atop the state premiership.
