Catterick and Plumpton meetings abandoned due to bad weather – Horse Racing Update
Catterick and Plumpton had to cancel their meetings on Monday, February 13, 2012 due to frozen tracks. The weather conditions in England have disrupted quite a few races until now and the situation has not improved at all.
The racecourse at Catterick was covered by frost and the organisers had called for inspection on Sunday, February 12. Although they initially decided to cancel the event, clerk of the course, Fiona Needham, decided to have another look on Monday morning.
She thought that the conditions could improve until today morning, thus conducted another inspection. However, the conditions did not change much and there was still quite a lot of frost on the track, which resulted in abandonment of the meeting.
Fiona said that the temperatures have started to improve a little, but the track was affected badly by the snow. She was hopeful that conditions would continue improving and there will no problems in the coming weeks.
The clerk of the course stated, “Temperatures have risen but 20 per cent of the track is under snow and the rest of the track is still frozen. The frost is deep in the ground and unfortunately racing will come a day too early. We also had to be cautious
of the surface becoming slippery when the frost thaws and that can make racing dangerous. It's the way it goes.”
On the other hand, conditions at Plumpton were clearly terrible and the organisers were helpless against nature. They did not take long before cancelling the event, as the temperatures had fallen way below freezing point over the past couple of nights.
Mark Cornford, clerk of the course at Plumpton, was disappointed over the situation. He said that the fall of mercury over the past couple of days was a surprise for him, as the forecast did not suggest such extreme temperatures.
He went onto say that things are expected to improve over the next week, but the officials in Plumpton did not have any time to get the conditions ready for action.
According to Cornford, “We're very disappointed, we were not expecting the sort of temperatures we've had the last two nights, -11C two nights ago and -10C last night.”
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