Rain claims Kelso

This evening’s meeting at Kelso has been abandoned after the track was hit by substantially more rain than forecast.

Course officials did not feel the need to call an inspection as conditions have been raceable for most of the day.

But with the rain having now set in and with more on the way for the next few hours at the Borders track, clerk of the course Hazel Peplinski has had to draw stumps.

She said: “It’s hugely disappointing. We were confident right up until lunchtime and the Met Office forecast at that stage was for only another five millimetres, which the track could have taken.

“Then when I rang them at 2.30pm and told them the rain was really heavy here, they said we could now get another 15 millimetres before 8pm.

“They said the front that is coming across Scotland and Ireland is much broader than they thought.

“With the forecast as it is, it would be selfish to carry on.

“The track had coped with 18 millimetres since yesterday really well, but we are just beginning to get surface water now and I think the jockeys would have felt it was bordering on unsafe, and we can’t go with that.

“It’s hugely disappointing to be abandoning a meeting at this time of year, but it’s happening nationwide.”