LAHORE: An eight-race card will be gone through during the 35th running of the Lahore Winter Meeting at the Racecourse here on Sunday.

This is last but one edition of the winter meetings which started with the staging of the cup races named after the national war heroes and the recipients of the highest gallantry award, the Nishan-e-Haider last September.

The two big events listed to run on Sunday the Royal Ascot Cup, a handicap race for three-year-old and above horses to be gone over 2,800 metres and the Farewell Cup for three-year-old thoroughbred and half-bred colts and fillies to be contested over 1,600 metres have been both declared void for paucity of runners.

This provides the class six and class seven horses’ a chance to make the card lengthy, though without a cup race.

And, with the mercury going upward gradually, perhaps in the days ahead the owners of horses in class five and up will rarely take chance to run their horses when the summer season sets in Lahore.

The increase in the stake money, announced by the Lahore Race Club (LRC) should be a big incentive for the owners to send their chance horses on job to make the events interesting and the contests close.

In all, 73 runners are expected to line up at the starting gate for the events, all to be gone over the sprinting distance of 1,000 metres.

The first race is scheduled to start at 1.00pm.