Warwick geared up for return

Officials at Warwick are confident their meeting on Saturday week will go ahead without a hitch despite the problems encountered by the course yesterday.

The seven-race card was abandoned after just two races following concerns over a stretch of false ground.

Managing director Huw Williams said: “We are extremely concerned by what happened and together with our parent company, Jockey Club Racecourses, we will carry out our own review to establish how the situation came to pass that the course was found to be unfit.

“As was stated yesterday, we raced without a problem under similar conditions at our last meeting 10 days ago and opinion was divided yesterday as to whether the course was or wasn’t fit to race.

“I would hope that the British Horseracing Authority’s enquiry will reflect this.

“Our next race meeting is scheduled for September 15 and having met with our course inspector, together we are confident that there won’t be a problem for that fixture. We will continue to liaise with Nick Carlisle, Warwick’s course inspector, and we intend to invite local trainers to inspect the relevant part of the track in advance of our next meeting.

“The process of refunding racegoers is already under way. We sympathise with the frustration felt by connections of declared horses whose races were abandoned following the inspection of the track and we will be contacting connections when we have completed our own review.”