The Wodonga Gold Cup public holiday has been given the green light from the Victorian Government for the next five years.
Wodonga Council in April voted in favour of extending the Wodonga Gold Cup Day public holiday for five years.
November 25, 2022, November 24, 2023, November 29, 2024, November 28, 2025 and November 27, 2026 will be public holidays for Wodonga instead of Melbourne Cup Day.
The holiday was gazetted on Thursday, June 10 after being signed off by the Minister for Small Business Jaala Pulford.
Wodonga Mayor Cr Kevin Poulton said Racing Wodonga’s work to build on its annual gold cup would benefit the community.
“This event will continue to add to the identity of our city,” he said.
“Racing Wodonga have already put in a lot of work in making this a premier event and we look forward to them building on that work and seeing this race meeting going from strength to strength.”
In the four-year period from 2016 to 2019, the Wodonga Gold Cup contributed the following to the community.
- 33,323 people attended the event, with an average yearly increase of 9.6 per cent.
- 2019 attendees were predominantly from Wodonga (59.3%), followed by interstate (22.0%) and other parts of Victoria (19.0%).
- The 2019 event had a total of 3424 non-locals travel to Wodonga for the event.
- In 2019, the economic stimulus to Wodonga reached a four-year high of
$3.23 million.
Racing Wodonga Chief Executive Officer Steve Wright said the club was thrilled with the five-year extension of the cup public holiday.
“This event has grown enormously in recent years and has become without doubt, Wodonga’s biggest social event,” he said.
“We are proud to conduct an event which attracts thousands of visitors to the city and injects millions of dollars into the local economy. We are extremely grateful for the support our submission received from the councillors and council staff and look forward to continuing to put on an amazing event for the community”.