Officials in Warwick are “cautiously optimistic” that Saturday’s high-profile card will go ahead as frigid weather continues to disrupt the fixture list and threatens to derail top-level racing over the weekend.
Racing in Britain was completely wiped out by frigid conditions on Monday, with only the two all-weather races at Southwell and Wolverhampton going ahead on Tuesday.
But course leader Nessie Chanter hopes to host the William Hill Classic Chase card after the 2025 meeting was lost due to similarly unfavorable weather.
“I keep hitting the refresh button on the weather forecast, which is constantly changing,” Chanter said Tuesday afternoon. “Strangely enough, I think things are getting better.
“Tonight seems to be the last night below freezing, temperatures will rise from tomorrow.
“A fair amount of rain is expected on Thursday evening, so as long as that doesn’t turn to snow, that will only help us.
“Temperatures will rise to 4 or 5 degrees Celsius during the day, so we are cautiously optimistic, but at the same time we need a favorable weather forecast and a windfall.
“If we didn’t have that rain forecast, I would be pessimistic. If it does come as rain, that should speed up the thawing process.
“If there are areas we can cover on Friday we will, but at the moment it looks like we will remain above freezing until Saturday. I hope it continues, we lost it last year and we have such good entries that we are just hoping and praying.”
The Coral Silviniaco Conti Chase is Kempton’s feature on Saturday, but it looks to be a race against time to see if the Grade Two event will beat the freeze.
“It’s really frozen,” course director Barney Clifford said.
“In the last three days we have had three consecutive nights of -6ºC and temperatures no higher than 2ºC.
“So we have to improve the forecast enormously over the next four days. At the moment we are not raceable and you can’t have optimism if you are not raceable on Tuesday afternoon.”
“If the weather forecast goes our way, the chances are 50-50, but we will know more on Thursday afternoon and Friday.
“If we were supposed to race tomorrow, I would have stopped this afternoon. But we just have to give it time and see how the forecast turns out.”
The Naas meeting, which was abandoned on Sunday, also needs improvements ahead of Friday’s rescheduled card, which is due to Grade One action in the Ballymore Novice Hurdle.
“We are still unable to race. We will reassess where we are tomorrow morning and update then,” said Naas course leader Brendan Sheridan.
“The forecast now looks more positive than yesterday, so we are hopeful, but we are still not in a position to race at the moment.”
Catterick’s jump meeting on Thursday was canceled on Tuesday morning.
“It was -6C overnight. We’ve had progressive hard frost down to -6C with wind chill, but last night it was just -6C,” course leader Fiona Needham said.
Huntingdon has organized an inspection at 9am on Wednesday morning ahead of Friday’s jump card, while the Leicester meeting on Wednesday had already been called off.
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