A devastated Scott Jones, Lismore Turf Club Secretary Manager, has been informed by stewards that the 2024 Rodney Lees Cabinetmaking Lismore Cup has been postponed.

32mm of rain fell on the race course since 9am yesterday, making it difficult to run the Lismore Cup race meeting. However, the weather forecast for the rest of today and the likely event that the course would close later forced stewards to make the call early.

"When we arrived at five o'clock this morning, the track was still raceable. So, the 30 mils overnight got us to a point where we're right on the edge of a Heavy 9 or Heavy 10. But, with the way the weather is and looking outside, there's more rain on the horizon, and rather than get trainers halfway here and wash out in an hour or two, the stewards and the club just decided that if we call it off today and see if we can postpone to later next week.

The racing of the Lismore Cup is an important part of the NSW Spring Racing Carnival as the winner gets entry into the $3 million The Big Dance on November 5 at Royal Randwick in Sydney.

"At the moment, Racing New South Wales and myself are talking to try and get a race meet for the Lismore Cup to be run next Thursday. If that can happen, then away we go, we try and race it next week. Obviously, the crowd side of things would be a little bit different, but as the Lismore Cup is now a Big Dance qualifier, we need to get a winner for the Lismore Cup so they can progress down to The Big Dance final.

"Our Cup is a perfect lead into it as it's about five or six weeks away from it. We are 1500, and it's over 1600, so it's a pretty good lead-in race to attack that."

For the thousands of expected racegoers and partygoers today, Scott has decided that all tickets will be refunded.

"Generally speaking, if it was nice and sunny, we'd have hospitality, and people could come out; although there'd be no races on the track, they could still enjoy a day with their friends. Because it is just a miserable cold day, we've decided we couldn't offer value for people when they're spending good money to come to, say, the VIP tent or the trackside tables. We couldn't give people a good day, to be honest, with the bad weather."

"All tickets will be refunded. Through Local Tickets or Lismore tickets, I'll process to say yes, everything is a refund and that can take 2 to 3 days to come through because all the money sits with them. Being a Friday, it's probably more like Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday next week."

Scott Jones and Operations Manager Daniel Kedraika deserve a change of luck. The Lismore Cup has not had a warm spring day in about five years now. This year has been particularly tough.

"I think we've washed out five or six race meets, as has been the case for a lot of the tracks on the eastern side. We just can't seem to take a trick on the bigger race days of the year. We've unfortunately just got the weather at the wrong time. Like the Country Championships in February. We got rain the day before. There's always the Christmas Cup," Scott said optimistically.

This rain has been caused by a weather system from the northwest, which will turn southerly today, bringing even more rain, especially tomorrow. 15mm to 70mm is forecast tomorrow (Saturday), so there could be some possible flash flooding if the rainfall is on the higher side. More to come throughout the day.