Rain claims most of the weekend jumps action
Horse Racing Ireland moved quickly to announced six replacement fixtures to compensate for the meetings lost through the recent spell of bad weather.
The card at Navan which was initially scheduled for Sunday will now be held next Saturday while Flat cards will be held at Limerick on April 12 and May 13 with a jumps meeting on May 14.
An additional National Hunt fixture will be staged at Thurles on April 21 while Cork’s meeting, which was cancelled on March 26, will now be held on June 10.
At Navan, clerk of the course Joe Collins was forced into making the decision to abandon after 19 millimetres of overnight rain on Thursday.
“The course is waterlogged and there is no way we would have been raceable in time for Sunday because further rain is forecast,” he said.
Officials at Uttoxeter have abandoned today’s jumps card while Sunday’s meetings at Hexham and Newton Abbot have all fallen due to the recent rain. That leaves just Fontwell to race on turf today while Lingfield and Kempton will be in action on the all-weather on Saturday, with the latter venue racing again on Sunday.
Uttoxeter were due to stage the best jumps meeting of the weekend but heavy rain has left the track saturated and clerk of the course Keith Ottesen did not believe conditions would improve enough for their meeting to go ahead.
He said: “We have had to abandon as the rate of recovery has not been quick enough after the accumulation of rain in the last seven days.
“With another band of rain forecast to move in, it needs more help than it’s getting.”
Newton Abbot knew their fate early on and clerk of the course Jason Loosemore called off their Sunday meeting early on Friday morning.
“We had another six millimetres of rain overnight so we called an earlier inspection than was first issued,” he explained. “The rule as it stood stated that the meeting couldn’t be abandoned by 12pm, two days before the meeting. But following heavy overnight rain, the course was found to be waterlogged in places and unraceable.
“And because of further forecast rainfall in the next few days, we consulted with the inspector of the courses to get the meeting called off earlier.”
At Hexham, an inspection was initially called for 10am today but that was brought forward to 4pm yesterday. However, conditions were so bad at the track that the meeting was called off earlier than expected. “We brought the inspection forward as it was still raining and there was no prospect of it drying out,” said a course spokesman.
