Cheltenham braced for battering

Officials at Cheltenham are currently experiencing the calm before the storm - literally.

The course would normally be a hive of activity this weekend on the eve of the four-day Festival anyway but with gale-force winds predicted to batter the country until Tuesday, extra precautions have had to be taken.

“It’s a glorious day here today, the sun is out and we have light winds at the moment but that is expected to change after midnight,” said clerk of the course Simon Claisse.

“There are Met Office warnings out for a gale starting tomorrow morning and lasting through to early on Tuesday, with wind speeds up to maybe 50 or 60 mph and possibly somewhere between half an inch and an inch of rain.

“We are making sure that anything that doesn’t need to be set up and might blow away gets left until Tuesday.

“With temporary structures for 15,000 people we just want to make sure those are all safe.

“We just have to ride it out from tomorrow through to Tuesday morning.

“I don’t think it’s easy for the forecasters to be precise about how much rain will fall with such a strong gale coming.

“Some of the Irish horses have precautions in place and whereas in normal years we would have only 30 or 40 horses on the Sunday we already have 100 here. The great majority of them will be here by the end of today.”

What everybody wants to know however, is what the going is likely to be.

“We are currently good on the Old Course, the cross-country has good to firm places and the New Course is good to soft, good in places,” Claisse told At The Races.

“I’m told the certainty of what is coming is very high and it would be a big surprise to everybody if we had no rain between now and Tuesday.”