Racing in the hands of stormy weather

The stormy weather prevalent all over Britain currently is playing havoc with the National Hunt fixture list.

However, with gale force winds now seemingly replacing heavy rain, prospects look far rosier than they did 24 hours ago.

Both of Friday’s turf meetings and Huntingdon and Kelso have been given the go-ahead, but with contrasting conditions. Huntingdon may be racing on good to soft ground but conditions up at the Borders track are very testing indeed.

“We had a dry night,” said Huntingdon clerk of the course Fiona Needham.

"There was no need for an inspection but there is some light rain forecast this morning. If that rain doesn’t come, there is even the chance that it could go to good to soft with the wind as it is."

Kelso, on the other hand, are only just raceable.

“We passed our inspection and it was dry until 6.00am but then we had an hour of rain,” said clerk of the course Anthea Morshead. The track is raceable at the moment. We are getting conflicting forecasts though, some say we will only get a millimetre or two but others say five or six.

“All we can do is pass it and we will just have to cope with what we get during the day.”

The feature meeting of the weekend at Warwick still hangs in the balance though after an 8.00am look on Friday proved inconclusive.

Prospects look far brighter now, however, and Needham is ‘very hopeful’ that the meeting will take place.

“We were dry overnight and we are not forecast any more significant rain before racing,” said clerk of the course, Fiona Needham.

“Providing that the forecast is right we should be fine but we are having another inspection in the morning at 7.30. We are very hopeful though.”

Unfortunately, Carlisle’s meeting on Sunday has already bitten the dust though.

“We’ve abandoned,” said clerk of the course, Jonnie Fenwicke-Clennell.

“We are waterlogged. We had another six millimetres of rain last night and it is still raining so there is no way it will dry out in time.”