Southern District chief steward John Davidson inspected both the Cootamundra and Gundagai tracks on Wednesday before making the decision.

Gundagai-Adelong Racing Club have recently upgraded their irrigation system and the track had not completely recovered in time for Saturday’s race meeting.

Davidson said that issue combined with the heavy nature of the track due to the recent rain deemed the Gundagai track unsuitable for racing.

He then travelled to inspect the Cootamundra track before making the decision to transfer the meeting.

Davidson said keeping the meeting from being lost altogether was a win for the industry.

“We had to try and run it,” Davidson said.

“We have 214 nominations for seven races at Corowa next week. If we had of lost this meeting then we would have had to allow then to nominate at Corowa and would have ended up with 50 horses missing out on a start and getting preference at the next meeting.

“We would have had a big backlog of horses not getting a start so it’s a good result if we go ahead and race at Cootamundra.”

The Cootamundra track was rated a heavy eight on Wednesday.

“There is a bit of rain forecast but it’s all systems go at this stage,” Davidson said.

Cootamundra Turf Club will now run the meeting as if it was their own.

Acceptances for the meeting will close at 9am on Thursday morning with some alterations to the race distances.

The two 1000m races programmed will now be run over 1100m. The two races that were scheduled to be run over 1180m will now be 1200m.

The 1800m Class One and Maiden Plate has been shortened to 1600m. The 1400m race remains unchanged.

Meantime, Corowa will host the first leg of the Southern District Winter Series at their TAB meeting on Tuesday.