Derby Weekend a success

RECALL EAST CAPE DERBY WEEKEND IN PORT ELIZABETH

Fairview Racecourse yesterday lived up to the hype when it hosted the PE East Cape Derby Weekend. The event set a new record, having hosted the biggest on-course attendance in years, when thousands of visitors flocked to the course for the PE Prawn Festival and the Recall East Cape Derby (Gr3) Raceday.
On Friday, Community Chest raised over R40 000 for their day crèches project. This includes the upgrading of carpeting and educational materials.
The EPOL DAHLIA PLATE (L) was won by the Alan Greeff Trained Seattle Joe, well ridden by Greg Cheyne.
Yesterday saw the feature race of the day, the Recall East Cape Derby (Gr3), which was won by the Vaughan Marshall trained Desert Swirl who finished with a powerful turn of foot and was well handled by jockey MJ Beyleveld.
The fashion competition hosted by the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU) Fashion and Textile Design Department was won by design student Cleo Allison. Cleo designed a tornado themed black and white number. Over R35 000 Lektron appliances were also given away at the event.
Live music kept the crowd entertained in between races while kids enjoyed the play area and a crafters market.
Mother’s Day was made special with beauty treatments, gym membership and Lindt chocolates being handed out.
"Since this was the first ever Prawn Festival held at Fairview Racecourse, it has already been decided to build on this event, ensuring a bigger, better Prawn Festival next year. We catered for a ton of prawns and we were sold out by 3pm. We are so pleased with the turnout and thank patrons for their patience and support. We did not expect that many people, now that we realize there's a demand we will make sure that we are better prepared next year on every front", said Fairview Racecourse events manager, Karin le Roux.

Great stuff, hopefully they had some promotional offer to entice patrons to come racing again before the next prawn festival?

Greg, having fun is a great enticement IMO

Unfortunately I gamble so never have fun when racing lol

Hibs yes its a fantastic day for entertainment but once a year, come on they need to do more than that, might as well just have a prawn festival in the local park then...

It was great to see Fairview so busy and full of people yesterday. The main problem here is that we race on a work day, Friday. We only get 2 Sundays annually and those 2 days are busy....PE needs more weekend racing....

Lots of on course promotion yesterday....

Nice to see though.

Racing will always do well in PE as they have the passion (tu)