A long awaited deal between Racing Victoria and Channel 7 signed off on Tuesday will see the Jack Maher Classic meeting being available to more than 90 per cent of the nation.

Metropolitan markets have had access to the Victorian racing coverage for the past month but now those on the  Border along with the rest of Victoria, NSW, Western Australia, the ACT and Gold Coast will be able to watch the eight race card on Channel 68. 

While more recent TVs will automatically pick up the new channel, older sets may require manual tuning or even set top boxes.

Racing club general manager Tom O’Connor said it was karma.

The Jack Maher day, one of the Wodonga’s feature meetings, was transferred from Sunday after stewards ruled the week-long deluge had made the track unsafe for racing. 

“The first meeting to be broadcast on the new channel is today at Pakenham so hopefully they iron out all the bugs and it goes off without a hitch,” O’Connor said.

“This was the deal we are hoping for so it has been worth the wait.

“Under the previous arrangement the meeting would have gone into the metro markets and streamed on the internet.

“From a club’s point of view we couldn’t be happier, it is also a huge win for our sponsors who now get national free-to-air coverage for the race day.”

The scratching of Godolphin’s well-fancied topweight Demonstrate along with the David Hayes trained Poet’s Choice has seen Our Boy Leo installed as the $4 favourite for the two-year-old feature.

Tricky Redente, trained by Wodonga’s Sylvia Thompson who also prepared last year’s Jack Maher winner, is a $51 outsider along with other local hopes Miss Koru and Scout Finch.  

RV chief executive, Bernard Saundry, said it was a great result.

“The goal throughout our negotiations has been to ensure that vision of Victorian racing was available to more people, in more locations and on more platforms and today we move a step closer to our end goal,” he said.

“I want to thank both PRIME7 and Seven West Media for their support and regional punters, fans and participants who have been extremely patient over the past month where they’ve had restricted access to Victorian racing.

“We know there is still work to be done to extend to all regional areas nationally and across all platforms, including Foxtel, which we remain focused on achieving but this is fantastic news.”