Horse Racing: Fontwell and Leicester abandon meetings due to big freeze
An inspection of the Fontwell course on Monday, led to the meeting being called off. The jump event was due to take place on Tuesday. The officials of the racecourse have announced that they are almost certain that the meeting will be held, over the weekend.
However, the meeting was not possible on Tuesday, as the temperatures in the country dropped as low as minus six degree Celsius, on Sunday night. Thus parts of the racetrack are frozen, leaving no prospects for the event to take place.
Ed Arkell, the manager of the racecourse was reported as saying, “It’s really disappointing. We had the track cleared of snow and looking lovely over the weekend and we thought we were laughing.” The manger went on to say, while commenting on the conditions
of the course, “However, it fell right down to -6C and areas of the track are frozen, including underneath the fleece covers. It’s only just reached 0C (1.30 p.m.) and with another freezing night forecast on Monday, it will not come out of the ground in time.”
The only jumping events that will be taking place in Britain, this weekend, are considered to be either at Huntinggdon, Ludlow or Taunton, on Thursday. Meanwhile, the racing events that have already fallen victim to the freezing weather are the Sedgefield
fixture on Tuesday and Hexam and Leicester fixtures on Wednesday.The Leicester track has also been reported to be frozen and thus the Wednesday meeting has been called off, after an inspection that was carried out by the officials on Monday, at 11 a.m. The
clerk of the course, Jimmy Stevenson was reported as saying, “We started to make some progress over the weekend but the temperatures fell to -7.8C on Sunday night and the ground is frozen solid. It’s still -4C now with a freezing fog and we were given no chance.”
He further added, “The forecast for the next couple of days is just as desperate and temperatures will not start to rise again until Thursday. If we had had another frost-free night on Sunday we would have been in with a chance but it wasn’t to be.”
The next date for the Leicester meeting has been announced to be the 28th of December. Meanwhile, when the correspondents approached the officials of the Ludlow course, to get some update about the prospects of the Thursday’s jump card, clerk
of the course stated, “Realistically, unless the forecast is wrong, there isn’t any chance. It got down to -8C last night and we’re frozen solid.”
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