For the fourth time in less than a week, a posse of riders and officials were forced to inspect a track mid-meeting on Monday after jockeys reported slipping on Lingfield’s home turn in the first contest on what was scheduled to be a seven-race card. Unlike similar inspections at Haydock Park, Beverley and Chester in recent days, the meeting was not abandoned entirely, but racing continued only on the straight course with the card reduced to just five events.
At all four tracks, concerns were raised that horses were slipping on the bends. Haydock’s card on Friday evening was abandoned after two races, while Chester staged four races on Saturday afternoon before the meeting was called off. The course then caused controversy by announcing that it would not offer refunds to racegoers as it had staged the day’s feature race, a Class 2 handicap, although it said via Twitter on Monday that it is now “assessing how we can acknowledge the disappointment felt by customers, owners, trainers and bookmakers”.
Sally Iggulden, Beverley’s chief executive, said last week that Wednesday’s card was the first in her 22 years at the course that had been abandoned mid-meeting, which hints at how exceptional it is for four British meetings to have similar issues with unsafe ground in such a short period of time.
Heavy rain after a prolonged spell of dry weather has been raised as one possible explanation, while Kirkland Tellwright, Haydock’s clerk of the course, applied 8mm of water three days before Friday’s card. The meeting then opened on good-to-soft ground after 6mm of rain on Wednesday and Thursday, having been described as good-to-firm on Tuesday.
The British Horseracing Authority’s general instructions require tracks to aim to provide “good-to-firm ground”, while adding that the regulator accepts “that some managing executives may wish to produce good ground depending upon their track topography, soil type, weather patterns and/or whether they are staging two or more consecutive days racing”.
Beverley was not watered in the run-up to last Wednesday’s meeting, though an anonymous jockey told the Racing Post that rail movements meant the home turn was “tight as a right angle”. Both Beverley and Haydock have staged meeting since their abandoned cards without incident.
“It’s a difficult one,” George Hill, Lingfield’s clerk of the course, said on Monday. “I haven’t prepared the track any differently than I would have done the last few weeks we’ve been racing here. This is our fourth turf meeting this month and the track was prepared exactly the same way, it’s not like we’ve been moving rails.
“I’m scratching my head to figure out why that horse has slipped in race one. It’s something we’ll have our agronomist out to look at next week in case there’s something we’ve missed. Unfortunately, it’s just a situation where we’ve managed to lose two races on safety grounds, we can only apologise to the connections of all the horses and Arc [the track’s owner] will reimburse owners for those races.”
Quick Guide
Greg Wood’s Tuesday tips
Show
Newbury 1.00 Clenched
1.35 Al Khazneh
2.10 Bresson
2.40 Eternal Pearl
3.10 Grand Scheme
3.40 Nizaaka
4.10 Galiac
4.40 Antiphon
Leicester
1.20 New Definition
1.55 Show Respect
2.30 Prayer Matt
3.00 Tucson Cloud
3.30 Letter Of The Law
4.00 Golden Spice (nb)
4.30 At Liberty
Brighton
1.45 Enforced
2.20 Shamshon
2.50 Bear To Dream
3.20 Little Boy Blue
3.50 Wisper
4.20 Sly Madam
4.55 Kath’s Toyboy
Thirsk
5.22 Noor Bano
5.52 Belle Of Annandale
6.22 Dream Together (nap)
6.52 Charlie Arthur
7.22 Clodovea
7.52 Cuban Beat
8.27 Antagonize
Yarmouth
5.29 Legende D’Art
5.59 Kuwait City
6.29 Dream By Day
6.59 Franco Grasso
7.29 Lil Guff
8.04 Mango Boy
8.34 Night Glass
Epsom racecourse said on Monday that next Saturday’s Cazoo Derby will be run in memory of Lester Piggott, who won the Classic a record nine times, following his death on Sunday.
Jockeys will also wear black armbands in all races at the two-day Derby meeting, which opens on Friday, and there will be a minute’s applause at around 1.15pm, when a wreath in the racing colours Piggott wore aboard Nijinsky, the 1970 Triple Crown winner, will be laid at the statue of the legendary rider on the Queen Elizabeth II Stand lawn. A further minute’s applause will be held at 4pm on Saturday, half an hour before the Derby is due off at 4.30pm.