Hopes for Newbury rising
A more encouraging weather forecast at Newbury has given renewed hope that Saturday's prestigious fixture could beat the freeze.
Clerk of the course Richard Osgood has already deployed frost covers in an attempt to save a fixture that includes the Betfair Denman Chase, Betfair Hurdle and renamed versions of the Scilly Isles Novices' Chase and Game Spirit Chase.
He has been keenly checking the weather databases and while temperatures do not look as if they are going to improve quickly, they could be sufficiently higher by the weekend to make all the difference.
"At the moment, we are going to get a frost on Tuesday night, which will probably be the worst frost we have all week, and temperatures will not get up much on Wednesday, when it will be about 1C and cloudy.
"There will be another frost on Wednesday night, but not as bad. Moving into Thursday it should again be up to about 2C and down to about zero overnight. There is a weather front coming through from the south-west and they think that would bring a mixture of rain, sleet and snow.
"It should be just above zero on Friday night and moving to 3C or 4C on Saturday. It could be worse, but on the other hand it could change."
Kempton's all-weather card will be the only action on Wednesday, with Ludlow and Carlisle joining Lingfield in waving the white flag.
Thursday's meeting at Doncaster has also been abandoned due to frost and snow, and Huntingdon is under threat on the same afternoon. Conditions did improve slowly there, but another night of sub-zero temperatures are forecast with an inspection called for 8am on Wednesday.
Clerk of the course Sulekha Varma said: "We are still snow covered and frozen in places. There was a slow thaw, but not much, and it is due to get down to minus 4C or minus 5C tonight. We'll inspect at 8am, but it's not looking good."
Varma is also the clerk at Warwick, who race on Saturday, and she said: "On Thursday and Friday the temperatures might get high enough to help, so we'll just have to see what happens nearer the time."
7 February 2012
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