Dear All
As you may be aware that the future of Rasus has been in doubt since the Autumn last year following significant cuts in the budget for S4C, it had not been included on the list of programmes for commissioning for 2012. We have been working behind the scenes with Geraint Lewis and others for months to try to rescue a series. It was apparent for some weeks that the midweek series was not going to happen due to a change in programming strategy and budget. It did seem that Geraint had persuaded them to have a weekend series of 4 or 5 “super meetings” which were better value for S4C with a Crock of Gold final on a Tuesday in September at Tir Prince.
About three weeks ago we were told that S4C had decided to film harness racing but there would be only one date for Amman Valley, Saturday 16th June and one date for Tir Prince, Saturday 21st July with two days of filming from Tregaron. Due to the political ethos of S4C there was never any inkling that they would film outside Wales whatever happened.
After careful consideration we felt that not to have some sort of a series and no Crock of Gold final was not the best result for our sport and declined the date to allow Geraint Lewis to continue negotiating with S4C. Although there has been considerable amount of lobbying this week, following a meeting between Geraint and S4C due to the pressures on broadcasting this year with the Olympics and so much more, S4C could find no more time but committed themselves to the 4 days of broadcasting which amounts to 19 hours of tv 4 hours from AV and TP and 11 hours from Tregaron. We have consulted widely and have been able to persuade Geraint to hold a Crock of Gold final on 21st July, it will be run on the lines of the Little Brown Jug with heats and final as a pure free for all over a mile.
We will reluctantly ask for our date of Tuesday 24th July to be changed to Saturday 21st July. We had never had any desire to run on a Saturday and for those of you who know the operation at Tir Prince you would be aware that the Saturday in question is the first of the school holidays and we can expect 25,000 people to visit the market and fairground on that day, in short we could have done without it! We are aware that York have a meeting booked for 21st July and have recently decided to hold the Roosevelt on that date we will guarantee not to hold a trot on that day if they hold the Roosevelt on 21st.
We hope the sport will agree to the date change and understand the reasons why, we have supported date changes for such reasons in the past eg Musselburgh 2011 and we hope to promote a top class event. We would like to thank Geraint for all his work and to thank S4C for their continued support for harness racing.
Kind regards
David Senior
