Victorian trainers are busy rescheduling race dates for their horses after Racing Victoria called off another two meetings following this week’s heavy rain across much of the state.

Friday’s meeting at Sale and Sunday’s Wangaratta Cup meeting have been abandoned after the racecourses received 45mm and more than 100mm of rain respectively on Wednesday night and Thursday morning, rendering them unsafe for racing.

An inspection of the Wangaratta track and its drainage system will be undertaken to establish whether the Cup meeting is rescheduled before winter.

Already this week Racing Victoria (RV) called off Monday’s meeting at Moe and transferred next Tuesday’s meeting from Moe to Pakenham due to ongoing rain.

RV chief operating officer Bernard Saundry said the heavy rain since the weekend had not only impacted on the ability of tracks to host scheduled meetings, but also the ability to transfer meetings to other venues.

“We do not have a suitable venue in the state’s south-east to which we can transfer tomorrow’s Sale meeting and thus we have had to abandon it,” Saundry said.

“The tracks in that part of the state are either too wet, undergoing standard autumn renovations, already hosting meetings in the coming days or, in the case of Cranbourne and Stony Creek, preparing for major meetings over the Labour Day long weekend.”

He said the option of transferring the Sale meeting to Geelong’s synthetic track became unviable when RV was advised by trainers that more than half of the 82 runners would be scratched.

Saundry said there were 13 meetings programmed in Victoria over the Labour Day long weekend, providing multiple options for horses affected by the abandonments to compete a week later.

Nominations for Sandown next Wednesday and Ballarat the following day have been extended and now close at 10am (AEDT) on Friday.