With the introduction of Greyhound Racing Victoria’s recently upgraded Hot Weather Policy, Shepparton’s race meeting scheduled for Monday, 11 January has been cancelled due to extremely hot weather conditions.

The new policy came into effect as of 26 December, 2015 with the maximum temperature at which greyhound racing or trialling can be conducted now being not higher than 38 degrees. This is two degrees less than previously allowed.

As at 12.00 Noon today the Bureau of Meteorology has predicted high temperatures in various parts of Victoria for tomorrow, including a predicted 39 degrees Celsius in Shepparton.

The situation regarding Victoria’s two other January 11 greyhound race meetings is as follows:

Traralgon (Twilight – 38 degrees Celsius forecast) will now be moved to ‘Night’.

Ballarat (Day – 35 degrees Celsius forecast) will go ahead.

Both meetings will be marked as ‘Heat Affected’ with a final decision on Traralgon to be made tomorrow (Monday) morning prior to 8:30am.

With the expectation of extreme heat during the early part of this week, GRV will be closely monitoring the weather and providing updates each day on the status of meetings via its data & operational portal, FastTrack.

All decisions taken by GRV surrounding the rescheduling or cancellation of Victorian greyhound race meetings and trial sessions now take into account the predicted temperature of travel times to and from the venue.

The decisions to cancel the meetings are undertaken after careful consideration and consultation with the weather bureau and are made with the welfare of the greyhounds being paramount.