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Clarence River Jockey Club presented Grafton’s annual Horse Of the Year awards on September 19 with the John Shelton-trained Lucky Meteor taking out the top award.

Prepared by Shelton for well-known owners Brian and Elizabeth Paine, Lucky Meteor raced on nine occasions during the past season for six wins and a second including two Saturday wins in Brisbane.

The individual category winners were:-

2YO CAPRICIOUS SPIRIT (Morgan Butler)

3YO Filly HULA GIRL (Paddy Cunningham)

3YO C/G DUSTMAN (Todd Fletcher)

4YO+ Mare MISS CAITLYN (Paddy Cunningham)

4YO+ E/G LUCKY METEOR (John Shelton)

Veteran DESPERATE DAN (Alan Ryan)

The leading Grafton based jockey was Matt Paget. Leading apprentice was Jodi Worley and trainer John Shelton.

The Bob Gosling training excellence award went to Wayne Lawson who had an overall strike rate of over 21 % for the season and won a race with each horse he presented to race during the year

The John Hutchings riding excellence award went to Ben Looker who not only won the NRRA riding premiership but made the top 25 riders in Australia for the season.

CRJC EO Michael Beattie said “ The evening was a huge success where the club was able to recognise the significant contribution Grafton based participants made not only to local racing but to the sport throughout northern NSW and south east Queensland.

“Horses trained at Grafton won over 145 races during the season including a number in metropolitan level and at major race carnivals”

Meanwhile the Grafton meeting abandoned after four races on September 17 due to a hail storm is likely to result in a surge of nominations for race meetings across the region over the next two weeks.

The hail storm resulted in the last six races being cancelled, a big loss for the CRJC and local stables.

As a result Thursday's Lismore Cup meeting has received 170 nominations including many who missed out at Grafton.

Nominations are also expected to be up for Saturday's Bowraville Cup meeting and the Taree meeting on Sunday.

Beattie was disappointed with the loss of last Thursday's meeting but praised the officials for their handling of the situation.

"It would've been a brilliant meeting for the club financially. We lost an opportunity to showcase Grafton as a standalone meeting on a Thursday because we don't get many of those," Beattie said.

"But I'm comfortable with the decision not to continue the race meeting. I'm extremely pleased with the manner in which the whole day was handled by the officials who were in charge."