Minister for Racing Martin Pakula was in Ballarat on Saturday morning to announce a $4 million investment from the Victorian Racing Industry Fund towards the new surface. This is part of a $10 million joint funding package with Racing Victoria.

The news followed a recent commitment from the Liberals, which pledged $5 million to the project should the party win the upcoming election.

At the gathering on Saturday, Pakula stressed the announcement was “not an election commitment”.

“This is funding coming from the racing industry fund right now,” he said.

“This is not contingent on us. This is money that is being funded from the government as we speak to allow that work to start almost immediately.”

BTC chief executive Lachlan McKenzie said synthetic racing would be able to commence at the venue in May next year.

“This starts on Monday,” McKenzie said.

“We will have that shovel ready – on Monday we will be into this. We will be going from the planning stage to the next step.

“There's some works we can do on the course proper which won’t be used between now and the Ballarat Cup, so we can start some of those works.”

Labor also announced a range of other funding packages for racing in the region on Saturday. Full story page 30.