Winter Fair hopes to attract heavy-horse teams

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This article was published 28/03/2019 (2616 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Royal Manitoba Winter Fair is struggling to find ways to bring back heavy-horse teams that once competed for a spot in the coveted shows.

Only two teams are entered in the fair this year, down from eight last year.

A meeting has been set for today between representatives of the Provincial Exhibition of Manitoba and those in the heavy-horse industry in an effort to remedy the situation.

Jim Lane, from Lone Oak Percherons in Birtle, is one of those who plans on attending the meeting.

“Everything is going up all the time, I realize that, but it’s just getting a little bit too costly,” said Lane, who has had heavy-horse teams at the Winter Fair since the late 1980s. He will still be at the fair this year to sell his mares’ offspring.

Lane said it costs a lot to bring in a crew to the fair for the full week, and that combined with entry fees, stabling and other associated fees might not be worth the prize money up for grabs for some.

“If you can break even, it isn’t bad, because it’s advertising your horses, but when you can’t break even, it’s a little bit tough,” he said.

Lane said he hopes the meeting will allow the heavy-horse owners to air their concerns and reach an agreement with Provincial Exhibition officials on what needs to be done moving forward.

“Hopefully … if they get a little bit of a wakening here, hopefully things will change for another year,” he said.

“Obviously, it’s not something we’re happy with, to see the low number of entries this year,” said Provincial Exhibition general manager Ron Kristjansson.

Kristjansson said there were a lot of contributing factors, including the cost of coming to the fair and prior commitments that didn’t allow some heavy-horse owners to attend.

“We’ve had a lot of conversations with all of our heavy-horse exhibitors, past, present and future,” he said, including today’s meeting “to discuss going forward and building this show into a vibrant piece of our fair.”

Kristjansson noted there are a lot of costs involved in putting on the fair, including taking over the Keystone Centre for a week, converting hockey rinks into barns, as well as the Westoba Place hockey arena for the show ring.

“All of that takes time and money, so those are costs that are built into the show that we have to try and manage in some fashion,” he said, adding the prize money is determined by the number of entries, as well as entry fees and stall fees.

“There’s a full process for trying to build all that into the show, and that’s part of what these discussions are going to be (today) … going forward.”

Kristjansson said the heavy-horse shows are an important part of the Winter Fair.

“It’s a tradition. It’s something that’s very, very important to lots of our fair-goers, very important to our sponsors and to our exhibitors.”

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