Friday night’s Manikato Stakes has been rescheduled to Saturday’s Cox Plate card

A massive storm has derailed the final races of Friday night’s Group 1 Manikato Stakes card at The Valley with the group 1 sprint to be now staged on Saturday’s Cox Plate meeting.

The wild weather at The Valley on Friday night (Photo by Vince Caligiuri/Getty Images)

A WILD electric storm on Friday forced Racing Victoria (RV) stewards to abandon the Group 1 Manikato Stakes meeting after five races with the Group 1 contest now to be run as race 11 on Cox Plate day.

After an hour delay and promising signs of a restart, with race 6 struck off to accommodate the Manikato at the rescheduled time of 9.45pm, a frightening clap of thunder and lightning strike thwarted best intentions just as horses headed out onto the track.

Stewards abandoned the meeting immediately at 9.45pm.

Officials on Friday night added the Group 1 Manikato Stakes to Saturday’s Cox Plate card at The Valley.

The showpiece will be run as the last race and is scheduled to go at 6.25pm. Despite the Friday night deluge the track was rated a soft (6) at final scratchings time of 7.30am Saturday.

With the Manikato being moved replacement jockeys had to be found for Eleven Eleven (now Nash Rawiller) and September Run (Damien Oliver) with the original riders committed to Randwick on Saturday.

Inferno and Jamaea were scratched from the final field for the Manikato on Saturday morning while nominal favourite Tuvalu was an earlier scratching from the Group 2 Schweppes Crystal Mile.

The Quadrella for Saturday will now be run on races 8,9,10 and 11 with the Daily Double on races 9 and 11. Early Quaddie punters will be taking aim on races 4,5,6 and 7 while the Big 6 is on races 6,7,8,9,10 and 11.

The TAB posted that all fixed price bets placed on the Manikato will stand while all Tote bets will be refunded.

The Valley got hit by a wild storm on Friday night Picture: Vince Caligiuri

On Friday night steward Rob Montgomery said the second wave of lightning arrived at Moonee Valley sooner than expected.

“Obviously it’s bad news for the club ... we abandoned race 6, trying to get the Manikato out of the way, we thought we had a patch of clear air, we confirmed it with the weather bureau, obviously we got the riders on the horses and lightning strike again,” Montgomery told Racing.com.

“We have had to abandon the race meeting at 9.45pm, now we’re going to try and do some work around whether we can run the Manikato tomorrow (Saturday), so perhaps race 11 tomorrow. We’re just doing some work around that at the moment.

“There’s never a problem that can’t be solved. That’s our intention ... run the Manikato tomorrow ... we’ll see how we go.”

Stewards made the decision to attempt to run the Manikato on Friday after consultation with the Bureau of Meteorology but the weather closed in faster than predicted.

“The information from them was there was a slow storm coming down through Seymour, we thought we’d have enough gap to get in between that storm and it got here a bit quicker than expected,” Montgomery said.

“It’s not fair on the riders, not fair on the horses, not fair on the animals, the safest bet is to abandon the race meeting.”

OFFICIAL UPDATE: The 2022 Ladbrokes Manikato Stakes will now be run tomorrow on Ladbrokes Cox Plate Day. The race will be number 11 on the card.

— Moonee Valley Racing Club (@TheValley) October 21, 2022

Lightning reigned over The Valley from about 8.35pm until 9.15pm.

A 30-minute gap in the weather ended with another loud bang at 9.45pm.

Under RV policy, a compulsory 30-minute delay must be adhered to from the last flash of lightning.

Originally published as Friday night’s Manikato Stakes has been rescheduled to Saturday’s Cox Plate card