Catterick meeting in doubt, after a second inspection to be called for today
A second inspection is scheduled at Catterick on Friday, February 3, 2012. The meeting is under threat due to freezing temperatures, which have affected quite a few racecourses.
Seven races were scheduled to take place at Catterick, but things do not look good at the moment. Fiona Needham, clerk of the track, said that only one inspection was not enough to judge the conditions.
She went onto say that the conditions looked good after the first inspection was done, but the temperature continued to drop over the past few hours, which threaten the abandonment of the meeting.
Fiona was hopeful that the conditions would improve, but she added that the organisers have to be realistic about the situation, which seems to be getting worse by the day. She went onto say that the forecast is not good, as the temperatures will keep
on falling before the event starts.
Despite being hopeful of an improvement in conditions, Fiona stated, “But looking at the forecast, which suggests it may drop to -5C overnight, you would have to be pessimistic. However, the forecasts have been wrong up until now so we just have to
hope it continues like that.”
The weather conditions in England and Ireland have caused many disruptions in different races. This has left the fans of horse racing extremely disappointed over the past week. A few events have been abandoned due to the situation, but the organisers
are expecting things to get a touch better in the coming week.
At the moment, there are no signs of improvement in conditions at Catterick, which is not an encouraging sign for the organisers. It is not the only racecourse under threat of abandonment of races, many other venues are facing a similar situation.
One of those venues was Chepstow, where the temperature remained below freezing point consistently over the past few days. This resulted in abandonment of the meeting today, as the inspection revealed that frost had caused a lot of damage to the track.
Clerk at Chepstow, Keith Ottesen, stated, “We covered the course in frost protection on Sunday, and we were just about okay to race on Wednesday but a further consecutive day of frost and dry cold conditions has meant the frost has got underneath the
covers.”
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