Plumpton hopeful but Warwick deteriorates
Hopes of a quick resumption of jump racing tomorrow following the abandonment of today’s cards due to the cold snap rest on early morning inspections.
Officials at Plumpton and Warwick are to look at their respective tracks at 7.30am.
Plumpton was fit for racing today but the forecast is not good.
After an inspection this afternoon clerk of the course Geoff Stickels said: “We haven’t had this forecast snow – but it’s looking more and more like it - so we could be racing at this moment in time.
“But I will call an inspection at 7.30 tomorrow morning due to the forecast frost and possible snow.
“We are OK now so there’s no reason for us not to continue to be hopeful.”
However, at Warwick conditions deteriorated throughout the day.
Head groundsman Tony Howland said: “At three o’clock this afternoon we were very hopeful and were perfectly raceable.
“However, by quarter past three snow showers had come in and we have about three-quarters of an inch of snow across the track at the moment.
“The temperature has already dropped to minus two and is forecast to go down to minus four overnight.
“With things the way they are we wouldn’t be too hopeful, especially if the overnight forecast proves correct.”
Tomorrow’s other meeting is on the all-weather surface at Southwell.
Officials at Thurles will check the track at 7am after an improvement in the weather forced this afternoon’s planned inspection to be cancelled.
A seven-race card featuring the reappearance of Native Upmanship in the Grade Two MacLochlainn Road Markings Kinloch Brae Chase gets underway at 1.30pm.
The going is described as yielding.
No inspection is planned at Folkestone on Friday where the going is currently heavy, soft in places.
But officials at Doncaster will look at the track at 3pm tomorrow ahead of Friday’s meeting.
There is a light covering of snow on the track and frost is forecast for tonight.
“We had blizzard conditions for a while this afternoon and the temperature has been no higher than three degrees centigrade. It is forecast to get down to minus four or five tonight,” said track manager Malcolm Taylor.
“With that in mind we feel that it is sensible and cautious to call a preliminary inspection for tomorrow.
“We are expecting it to freeze again tomorrow night down to minus two and we may finish up with an inspection again on Friday.”
Taylor though is confident that Saturday’s card, featuring the £50,000 (€72,700) Skybet Chase, will go ahead.
“We are quite optimistic about Saturday as the weather is going to change. We don’t think Saturday is in danger at all,” he went on.
“It’s just that we had better play safe for Friday’s racing but we don’t pull in Friday just for the sake of saving Saturday. We don’t need to do that here.”
The going is good on the hurdles course and good, good to firm in places on the chase course.
No inspections are planned at the Ayr, Ascot and Uttoxeter where National Hunt racing is also due to take place on Saturday.
Ayr clerk of the course Anthea Morshead said: “The Met Office seem fairly certain that after tonight’s frost we should not get anymore.
“The wind is going to swing round to the west and bring in some milder air and temperatures should be five degrees and getting warmer by Saturday.
“We are raceable even at present. There was a small snow shower this morning but there was a further sleety shower that took that away. The forecast is largely dry and it may even be the case that the ground dries out a bit further.
“It is still good to soft at the moment and it may be good by the weekend.
“We are getting a pretty positive message from the weather forecasters and as long as that is correct I think we should be on.”
But today’s two fixtures at Hexham and Huntingdon were lost bringing the total of abandonments to 19.
