Horse Racing: Reve De Sivola wins at Cheltenham, cross-country race called off
Today was the first day of the two-day December meeting at the Cheltenham racecourse, after the big freeze victimized almost all the horse racing events that were scheduled to take place in December. The Grade II Injured Jockey’s Fund Oaksey House Novices’
Chase was run today at Cheltenham over a distance of 2 miles and 5 furlongs. The race was packed with rather uncalled for incidents, while the racehorse Reve De Sivola stole the show. He managed to hold off his major rival, champion colt Wishfull Thinking
in a very talented style. When the competitors approached the water jump, one of the contenders Othermix tripped over and brought down Radium with him. This falling of the two horses caused hindrance in the way of Wishfull Thinking and thus he lost the event
to Reve De Sivola.
Meanwhile the Glen Farclas Handicap Chase that was also scheduled to take place on today’s card at the cross-country course in Cheltenham was abandoned once again due to the weather conditions. It has been reported that the course was still frozen at some
places on Friday morning and thus the officials decided to call off the event. An inspection was carried out by the racecourse officials at 10.30 a.m. on Friday morning after the temperatures in the region were below freezing point on Thursday night.
Simon Claisse, the clerk of the Cheltenham racecourse told correspondents, “It got down to -5C at eleven p.m. last night, and we needed things to go in the right direction and they didn’t.”
As a result of the abandonment of this event, all the other races that were due on today’s card were rescheduled. The events were reported to have been pushed back by half an hour whereas the first event of the day, the opening novice chase was initially
planned to kick off at 12.40 a.m.
The clerk of the course also revealed that some area of the chase course are frozen and thus they are missing out on the first fence and that they would not hold any race without frost covers on the courses.
As for tomorrow’s forecast, the situation is not that extreme. Temperatures are expected to be somewhere around 4-5C with an overnight temperature of 1C. Moreover, improvement was also observed in the conditions of the chase and hurdle course around midday
on Friday.
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