Newbury race times today have been between 1.38 to 3.41 seconds slow compared to between 1.36s to 10.69s slow yesterday (the slowly run 2m handicap being the very odd one out) and watching on TV it looked to be lovely spring ground with not a lot of divets being kicked up and maybe heading slightly towards the faster side of good (5.0 on going reading as of this morning).
Unless you have a real soft ground actioned horse (who really shouldn’t have been entered to run at the meeting in the first place) then you should not really be pulling your horse out on account of the ground, it has clearly been well watered with 8-12mm added Monday to ensure that there is no jar in the ground.
That being said, of the 7 non runners at Newbury today, three were due to the ground with the remaining 4 being a mixture of 2 due to a vet’s certificate (for being lame and a bruised foot) with the remaining 2 being self certificates stating ‘off feed’ and ‘not sound’.
Of those 3 that did state the ground as a reason, Al Mubir and Jimmy Speaking have both won on good ground but the majority of their wins have had the word soft in the going description and Al Mubir had even won on heavy. The other horse, Something Splendid, has had just 2 career wins and they both came on good to soft ground although he has been placed on good ground and finished 4th on good to firm.
