Racing Queensland set to pay out $1.5m in prizemoney for abandoned Brisbane Cup meeting

The Queensland racing industry is reeling following the news that Saturday night’s rescheduled Group 1 Brisbane Cup meeting has been abandoned.

The industry's showpiece The Q

The inaugural Group 1 Brisbane Cup meeting at The Q was supposed to usher in a new dawn for Queensland greyhound racing and put an exclamation mark on a winter carnival to remember.

A cause for celebration, optimism and hope at the industry’s brand spanking new $90m state-of-the-art facility.

But with the postponement of last Saturday’s card after just two races, and the decision on Wednesday night to abandon any hopes of staging this weekend’s rescheduled meeting, it will instead go down in infamy.

Make no mistake, the fallout from this seismic bungle will be immense.

And so it should be.

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When announcing that the showcase meeting had been abandoned, Racing Queensland (RQ) declared that the $1.49m in feature prizemoney would be dispersed evenly among the finalists in the respective races.

And rightly so given the significant expense and time connections – both locally and interstate – expended to partake in the carnival in good faith.

But while RQ now must absorb the astronomical prizemoney expense, it carries no meaningful wagering return to support it.

It’s essentially dead money that the industry must now wear, along with the embarrassment and public fallout that goes with it.

And the owners and trainers aren’t immune from the havoc either, many staring down the barrel at their one and only shot of Group race glory, now just left to ponder what might have been.

An aerial shot of the $90m The Q.

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A dark void left on the sport’s most prestigious honour rolls for 2025, one that was meant to mark an important moment in history.

When the post mortem begins on the whole sorry saga it will need to circle back well past the most recent events which led to the Q2 Parklands track being unfit and unsafe for racing.

Bubbling away for months has been material concerns about the track surface management at the three-track complex which has largely been shunned by club officials.

“Trainers have been raising concerns week after week but there’s been no appetite to listen, let alone acknowledge,” said leading trainer Tom Tzouvelis.

“We could all see where it was heading but they just wanted to keep hiding behind reports and readings and listening to people that quite frankly just aren’t up to the job at hand.”

As consequential as the loss of the Brisbane Cup meeting is, it may just very well be the circuit-breaker needed for change.

Since the Queensland Greyhound Racing Club (QGRC) was brought to life as a merged entity between the now defunct Brisbane GRC and Ipswich GRC, it’s been anything but smooth sailing.

Constant political infighting and jostling for power and relevance from within the club’s corridors has been a constant theme.

Greyhound racing at The Q complex.

And that was no better illustrated than during the saga that engulfed the club during the departure of the club’s former chief executive Peter Gleeson earlier in the year.

Then on Monday, it was revealed that highly respected northern NSW track curator Scott Higgins was set to take the reins as the track’s new lead curator.

It now seems for varying reasons that appointment is now on shaky ground as well.

As a greyhound facility and entertainment venue the opportunities at The Q are endless.

But for it to realise that potential change is needed.

And with Racing Queensland and the Queensland Government demanding answers, you can expect that change to come sooner rather than later.

Originally published as Racing Queensland set to pay out $1.5m in prizemoney for abandoned Brisbane Cup meeting