The Lockhart picnics have become the latest victim of the wet weather with Racing NSW confirming on Tuesday that the race meeting will not go ahead.

Southern District chief steward Liam Martin conducted a track inspection at Lockhart on Friday and found it unsafe for racing with surface water present.

It will be the third consecutive year the races have been called off, after COVID claimed the previous two editions, so the Lockhart club will push ahead with the event without the horses.

Lockhart Picnic Race Club president Will Lane explained there was still a number of elements in place to ensure the crowd has a good day.

"Unfortunately we won't be able to have any horses run around but we're still going to push ahead with the event," Lane said.

"The Bendigo Bank's got their guest speaker coming, Kurt Fearnley, he's coming regardless.

"They've also got some music organised throughout the day then we'll have fashions on the field and kids entertainment.

"We've got everything organised and paid for. Half of the people don't even watch the races anyway, it's just an excuse to have a drink."

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Having not held the event since 2019, Lockhart Picnic Race Club officials were hopeful of a crowd of up to 2000 racegoers on Friday.

The cancellation of the races will impact that number but the club is still hopeful of a big day.

"We'll obviously miss a few but there's also a few who would have already taken leave from work and have everything organised," Lane said.

"We were hoping originally for 1500 to 2000 but we're probably looking at half that now.

"It's happening a fair bit. I was talking to the boys at Jerilderie and they canned theirs on Friday when the stewards inspected their track. Leeton and Cootamundra have been moved to Narrandera.

"Jerilderie still had about 800 through the gate on Saturday, that was good for them, so hopefully we can do something similar."

The loss of another meeting is another blow for the racing industry particularly, having lost a number recently due to the wet weather.

Martin said Racing NSW would look at adding additional race meetings in the future but there was no alternative for Friday's picnics at Lockhart.

The club was looking forward to the racing side of things given they had received 50 nominations for their six-race card, where $45,000 in prizemoney was set to be on offer.

The $10,000 Verandah Town Cup (1400m) had attracted 15 nominations alone.

"It would have been good, too, I had a look at the nominations and we had 50 horses nominate and 15 for the main race," Lane said.

"Increasing the prizemoney has helped and there's been a few meetings cancelled around but anyway."

One feature of this year's Lockhart picnics was set to be the return of the train to and from Lockhart. At this stage, it is still going ahead, departing Junee at 9am and Wagga at 9.30am on Friday and returning by 9.30pm and 10pm.

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