Sport

Echuca harnesses recognition with Trots Clubs Victoria award

By Christian Marchetti

Jun 12, 2026

President Shane Gloury (right) and members of the Echuca Harness Racing Club with the Country Cup of the Year award, won at the recent 2025 Trots Clubs Victoria awards night.

Echuca Harness Racing Club was recently recognised with the Country Cup of the Year award at the Trots Clubs Victoria 2025 awards function.

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The event was held at Rich River Golf Club on May 18, returning to the local club for the first time since 2022.

Members of various harness racing clubs across Victoria attended the awards night, which also hosted Essendon legend Terry Daniher as a guest speaker and followed the Trots Clubs Victoria Networking Conference during the day.

In the evening, the Echuca club took out the Country Cup of the Year accolade for the first time.

The award was for its 2025 New Year’s Day meet, where thousands of locals and visitors attended a full slate of action, headlined by the Echuca Pacing Cup and three other featured races.

“It’s been a while since we've won any award of this kind, but overall, we're very pleased, and it's due recognition for everyone at the club that does a lot of work to put that meeting on,” Echuca Harness Racing Club president Shane Gloury said.

Echuca beat out a host of other clubs statewide, with the criteria including but not limited to growth in attendance, sponsorship contribution, local media coverage and financial returns relative to the previous year.

The New Year’s Day meet was held again earlier this year, the main difference from the 2025 meet being the addition of another featured race, the Tiffany Murray Memorial Pace.

Heading into 2027, the racing club has its eye on maintaining, if not bettering, the high standard it has set.

“We'll continue with the formula that we have, we think we're under a winning formula,” Gloury said.

“We've conducted fireworks for the last couple of years, being a New Year's Day event, and it seems to have gone very well.

“But we try to ensure that we've got fireworks, a range of kids’ activities, obviously we've got the racing, and just at a time of year where normally the weather is conducive, there's lots of visitors in town.

“We just try to ensure that we've got good family-friendly, fun entertainment, we keep the pricing reasonable, we make it accessible and affordable and fingers crossed the weather plays its part, which it normally does up here, and we've got all the ingredients for a good night.”