Musselburgh to make a Good Friday bid

Musselburgh Racecourse is to make a bid to introduce Good Friday horse racing in the UK for the first time.

If it gets the green light, Musselburgh would stage a three day Easter Festival of Racing, adding the Good Friday fixture to its well established double header on Easter Saturday and Sunday.

Historically, Good Friday is the only public holiday other than Christmas Day when racing doesn't take place in Britain but with changing attitudes to how people spend their leisure time, racecourse boss Bill Farnsworth believes the time is right to break with tradition.

A sticking point could be that training centres in the south usually hold their open days on Good Friday but Farnsworth points out that Scotland does not have any training centres so that would not be an issue.

He is to put a proposal to the British Horseracing Association and it's believed senior racing administrators are sympathetic to the idea.

If successful Musselburgh would opt for a combination of Flat and National Hunt races, establishing Scotland's first ever mixed meeting. It's possible the East Lothian course would emulate famous races such as The Lincoln, Brocklesby and Cesarewitch, staging a Scottish version as part of the package.

Bill Farnsworth said: "We have to keep moving forward and think differently if horse racing is to prosper and I believe a three day Easter Festival would be a huge hit with racing fans and within the industry.

"Traditionally racing has not been staged on Good Friday but nowadays most retailers and leisure operators are open as normal and we have to move with the times. I believe Good Friday racing would be most welcome by the huge number of racing fans on holiday over the Easter weekend.

"Training centres in the south hold their open days on Good Friday but as we don't have training centres in Scotland that shouldn't be an issue.

"Easter Sunday racing at Musselburgh is well established and now we have added the totepool.com Royal Mile Handicap on Easter Saturday we have the core product to extend this to a proper three day festival. I hope the racing industry will get behind this proposal and all going well we could roll this out next Easter."