Racing woke up to the news that all four scheduled race meetings in Britain on Thursday have been cancelled following confirmation of three cases of equine flu in vaccinated horses in a racing yard which sent runners to the meetings at Ayr and Ludlow on Thursday.
The trainer concerned is believed to be Donald McCain, whose Bankhouse Stables in Cheshire is home to more than 100 horses and is the only racing stable to send runners to both of Wednesday’s National Hunt meetings.
Equine influenza is highly contagious, has an incubation period of between one and five days and its symptoms can persist for several weeks. In severe cases, a horse might be unable to exercise for two or three months and a severe outbreak would have the potential to close down Britain’s racing industry for many weeks.
The immediate question on the mind of every racing professional and fan is how long the shutdown is likely to continue, with the jumps season approaching its climax at the Festival meeting at Cheltenham next month and many valuable trials for those races scheduled over the next two weeks.
The Festival is due to open on 12 March, in 33 days’ time, and many trainers will be planning a run for their best horses over the next fortnight to put the finishes touches to regimes that have been geared towards the sport’s showpiece event over the course of many months. Nearly 300 British-trained horses ran at last year’s Festival and 82, almost one-third, made their final start between 20 and 33 days before the meeting.
Newbury’s card on Saturday, which includes the Betfair Hurdle, the Game Spirit Chase and the Denman Chase, a significant trial for the Cheltenham Gold Cup, is arguably the most significant card in Britain in the run-up to the Festival, while the Grade Two Kingmaker Chase at Warwick the same afternoon is a likely target for Kalashnikov, a leading contender for the Arkle Trophy in March. The final Grade One event in Britain before the Cheltenham Festival, meanwhile, is the Betfair Ascot Chase at Ascot on 16 February.
Brant Dunshea, the British Horseracing Authority’s chief regulatory officer, told Sky Sports Racing a few minutes ago that its priority is to establish whether the two horses to race at Ludlow and Ayr on Wednesday were incubating the virus.
“We’re very fortunate in this country that our [racehorse] population is vaccinated against equine influenza,” Dunshea said, “but we’re still trying to understand what particular strain of equine influenza this is. The fact that it has appeared in a vaccinated population does cause us some concern, so we’re working quickly to try and understand what’s happened there.
“Key to our decision-making is understanding exactly the status of the horses that we know raced yesterday from the infected yard. We will have information in relation to samples taken from those two horses later this afternoon or early this evening.”