The Wellington Boot means a huge amount to the Wellington community and the impact of the annual carnival is going to be even bigger this year.
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Meetings will be run on Friday and Sunday for the first time and close to $750,000 in prizemoney will be on offer across the two days.
A healthy 154 nominations were released for Friday's meeting on Monday morning while the nominations for Sunday's meeting - headlined by the $200,000 Wellington Boot two-year-old feature - will be released on Tuesday.
"It injects more than $1 million into the local economy and it is the town's biggest sporting event and the town's biggest social event," Wellington Race Club secretary Dale Jones said.
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"It's pretty amazing because it's one of the richest carnivals outside the metropolitan areas and I don't think there's another two-year-old race worth $200,000 outside of the capital cities.
"It's pretty special when you think a town the size of Wellington and this race, that started in 1981, has developed to this stage and it's now become an iconic event and a bucket list event.
"We find that racegoers from all over the country come here."
Instead of the regular non-TAB meeting on Saturday and Boot meeting on Sunday, the action will begin with an upgraded TAB meeting on Friday this year.
"The benefit of having the Friday meeting is it's a full TAB meeting and even if the crowd is a little bit down, the turnover will make a difference and that turnover returns additional income to the club," Jones said.
Friday's meeting will be headlined by the iconic Iron Horse event, which is run over 2400m and has been upgraded to a $40,000 race, while the Golden Spur (1400m) is worth $27,000.
"It (Iron Horse) is becoming more and more popular," Jones said.
"Over the next couple of years we want to try and develop them into bigger prizemoney events.
"The Iron Horse is named after one of our best Wellington Boot winners."
We're trying to provide staying race opportunities for horses in the Central West.
- Dale Jones on the Iron Horse
Trained by Gai Waterhouse, Iron Horse won the Wellington Boot in 1995 and went on to win a Group 1 Epsom and place in the Caulfield Cup.
"We're trying to provide staying race opportunities for horses in the Central West," Jones added.
"There's very few races over 2400m out here and we're trying to offer a progression for promising stayers who might be able to go to the city."
Among the initial 13 nominations for Friday's Iron Horse were Dubbo hopes Careering Away, Club Town and Eva's Deel, trained by Garry Lunn, Michael Lunn and Brett Robb respectively, as well as Bacio Del Mist from the Rosehill stables of Lee and Cherie Curtis.
Nominations for Sunday's main day of racing will be released on Tuesday.
As well as the Boot, the meeting will also feature the $100,000 Wellington Cup, the $50,000 Town Plate sprint, a $40,000 Country Magic race and the $35,000 KFC Zinger dash over 900m.
"We always get strong nominations from city trainers so we're hoping to see that again," Jones said.
"The Snowdens, John Hawkes has won the Boot before and people like Bjorn Baker are strong supporters of the race and there's a lot of provincial trainers too, people like Damien Lane from Wyong."
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