TAREE Aquatic Powerboat Club commodore Jay Milligan wants to showcase the Manning River powerboat race course to the world.
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"We have the best river for powerboat racing in Australia,'' Milligan said.
"We run a championship course.''
Milligan revealed his club is in talks with organisers of a televised series, with the aim of hosting a round here. He said this would be separate to the club's marquee event for the year, the Easter Spectacular.
"I think it might be too much with what we've already got on at Easter,'' he said.
"The boats would also have to run too much and that might be hard on their gear.''
Milligan said a potential problem to running the round here would be charging a gate.
"It would be difficult to fence off the riverbank and that's where we'd struggle,'' he said.
"Everywhere else they go they can shut the area off pretty easily to charge a gate. But ours is so long and there are so many areas where people can watch the racing.
"They could just go across the river and watch it from there.''
Milligan said there would also be opposition from patrons to paying as the Easter Spectacular has been free for so many years.
"But if we want to have big events, it's something that we have to do,'' he added.
Last weekend's two day spectacular again attracted huge crowds to riverbank vantage points.
"We had so much luck with the weather and that helped,'' Milligan said.
The spectacular attracted 44 boats, about 20 less than normal. Milligan said the clash with a round of the televised series, to be conducted in a month, was the main reason.
"A lot of drivers want to run that series to get the TV coverage,'' he explained.
"So that took boats off us. But the boats that we did have here were quality.''
However, he said looking to 2025 and the televised series is scheduled to be run a week after Easter. He said that could potentially draw more boats away from Taree.
"I'm trying to get our national body, the APBA, to at least space out everyone's meetings to we can all get a good share of the boats and we can get strong racing to each town,'' he said.
Constable brothers dominate
The program was dominated by Team Odin driven by Ryan Constable from Constable Brothers Racing from the Hawkesbury.
"They're fairly new to the sport, but they've done very well,'' Milligan said.
The team won the Liberty Cup, the Vic Currie Invitational, the Barry Chaplin, a race that was resurrected by the club for this year's Easter Spectacular, the Geoff Stephenson Memorial along as various other events.
GP 1, driven by Victorian Grant Harrison, had a comfortable win in the King of the River, the final race of the program.
Milligan said it was pleasing to see a strong representation in the junior classes.
"We had 12 juniors racing and they were our biggest class,'' he said.
He added there were no major incidents during the two days.