AROUND 250 people took advantage of the beautiful long weekend weather to attend a "pop up" picnic race meeting at Nyngan – one of the few dry tracks in the state's west.

Ongoing flooding around western NSW has played havoc with the NSW picnic race circuit in recent months with meetings having to be called off at Enngonia, Louth and Come-by-Chance.

When it became obvious the Mungery races near Narromine couldn’t go ahead the long weekend, Racing NSW offered the Nyngan Jockey Club the opportunity to host a “pop up” picnic meeting instead.

With only a week to prepare, the Jockey Club and Bogan Shire Council prepared the racecourse, and organised local sponsors for a six race program.

Nyngan trainer Rodney Robb said Racing NSW approached Nyngan the weekend prior to the meeting when it became obvious Mungery was unable to host its meeting, and the Come-By-

Chance had also just fallen victim to the western floodwaters.

"It was too good an opportunity to knock back. We were helping out NSW Racing and anything like this is a good for Nyngan," Mr Robb said.

Beautiful weather, free entry and a well-stocked bar resulted in a crowd of around 250 people trackside.

Professional racing photographer Janian McMillan said the crowd was the largest she had seen at a “pop up” meet.

“Usually it’s just trainers, jockeys, officials and a few owners similar to the race meetings held during the COVID-19 lockdowns but this is a big crowd for a picnic meet organised only a week ago,” she said.

ABOVE: Nyngan Jockey Club president Denis Thorpe presents the RSL Trophy to Hemsted connections Connie Greig, Julia Presits and Leandro Robeiro.

The star of the day was Brazilian-born jockey Leandro Ribeiro who rode a treble including "Hemsted," the winner of the feature race of the day – The Nyngan RSL Open Trophy over 1400 metres.

Mr Ribeiro is the leading NSW Picnic Race jockey and together with his partner and fellow jockey Julia Presits, owns Hemsted, a seven year old gelding trained in Dubbo by Connie Greig. 

The Ribeiro/Greig combination narrowly won the second race of the day as well, when six-year-old gelding Individualist nosed ahead of the Rodney Robb trained "Bella" in the 1100m open handicap.

In other results Emily Waters rode the Clint Lundholm-trained "In the Road" to victory in the 900m class B handicap; Ricky Blewitt rode Outback Cod trained by Greg O'Neill to win the 1100m maiden; Leandro Robeiro rode the Bryan Dixon trained "Jackal" to win the 1200m class B handicap; and Willaim Stanley took out the last race, a 1600m class B handicap on Joint Factor, trained by Karen Lunn.

ABOVE: Kaleb Jans from Victoria with Clint Ledden and Peter O'Connor from Coonamble.