Trials Day at Cheltenham Racecourse, which was scheduled to take place on Saturday has been cancelled due bad weather SATURDAY’S Trials Day at Cheltenham Racecourse has been cancelled due to waterlogging. Officials had made people aware the meeting was in the balance due to rainfall which exceeded expectations, so an inspection had been called. An early update on Friday suggested it was touch-and-go following another wet night in the Cotswolds. However, with standing water in places, some fences already set to be omitted and not enough space to redirect the runners around the waterlogged patches. Clerk of the course Simon Claisse said: “We were always saying that we had to hope we wouldn’t get what was forecast and we’ve had what was forecast, unfortunately.
TOMORROW’s high-profile fixture at Cheltenham is in doubt after officials called a precautionary inspection for 2pm tomorrow.
Prestbury Park is due its usually informative Festival Trials Day the track’s final meeting before the Cheltenham Festival in March.
Clerk of the course Simon Claisse had to abandon racing on New Year’s Day because of waterlogging, and the same issue is causing concern this weekend for a card set to feature four Grade Two races including the course’s Gold Cup trial, the Cotswold Chase.
Claisse said this morning: “The ground is currently heavy, having had 15 millimetres of rain overnight and 30 for the week so far, which exceeded what we thought we’d get before racing.
The Leader Newspaper
By Andrew Atkinson
Cheltenham’s meeting on Saturday is in the balance, after heavy rainfall waterlogged parts of the course, ahead of the Festival Trials Day seven race-card, with an inspection scheduled on Friday.
“The ground is currently heavy. At the moment we’re raceable, but we’ll have to miss out a few fences, the first down the hill and the third last.
“We’ve announced a precautionary inspection for 2pm Friday afternoon. We’ll need a lot of help from the weather, in terms of the forecast being wrong and not getting as much rain as we’re seeing in the forecast,” said Simon Claisse, clerk of the course at Cheltenham.
New Timing Technology Set For Cheltenham Festival Appearance By Pablo Luna / Tuesday, 19 Jan 2021 03:30PM
Jump racing timing technology will once again be in use when the tapes go up for the 2021 Cheltenham Festival, which is expected to get underway on Tuesday 16th March.
A partnership between Cheltenham Racecourse and the British Horseracing Authority has confirmed the new technology, which was used for the first time at the Festival in 2019.
Improved since it’s the first use, the technology now uses the latest brake beam system, which has been advanced to help create a more accurate record of time data in horse races.
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The Relkeel Hurdle, which was a feature race, has been switched to Kempton on January 9.
Meanwhile, two-time Cheltenham Gold Cup winner Al Boum Photo faces four rivals as he again makes his seasonal debut in the Savills New Year’s Day Chase at Tramore.
They include two Willie Mullins-trained stablemates, Acapella Bourgeois, who was six-length runner-up to Al Boum Photo in the race last year, and Brahma Bull.
But it is another blow for Cheltenham racecourse, which had hoped to welcome 2,000 spectators for the event before Gloucestershire was placed into Tier 3 level of coronavirus restrictions by the government.
Racing continues to be hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, with venues across the UK facing revenue losses due to races taking place behind closed doors.