Catterick meeting in doubt

Catterick's meeting tomorrow is in doubt with an inspection being called for 7.30am.

The North Yorkshire course hope to escape freezing temperatures overnight with a daytime high tomorrow of around four or five degrees centigrade.

"The track has improved slightly, but there is one major area giving me concern. That is the part going up into the back straight, which we can't avoid," said clerk of the course Jonjo Sanderson.

"The track is generally tight but not crusty on top apart from that one area. We have to do our best and hope the weather helps us out.

"We are moving some rail to help another bad area so we are minimising the risk the best we can and all our take-offs and landings are covered again.

"If the forecast is accurate things will only keep improving throughout the night because there isn't any frost forecast.

"Hopefully it won't regress overnight. On Sunday night we were minus four for a little while and that wasn't forecast.

"If we did get down to minus two or three that would do for us. We would be back to square one and dead in the water.

"I was getting very pessimistic earlier on, but now I would say our chances are a bit better than 50-50, maybe 60-40.

"We could get up to four or five degrees and from quite early on tomorrow, which is what we need. Today we didn't get to plus three until well after midday."

A seven-race programme is scheduled to start at 12.20pm.