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I think they jumped about 6 hurdles in a 3 mile race. Not sure what can be done but the race bore no resemblance to that which was scheduled. You may as well have run a 3 mile bumper. Probably not coincidence that the race went to a 20/1 rag. The problem is I am not sure what you can do to resolve the problem but as a punter it would surely be beneficial to have races like this abandoned.
Brilliant idea – Meeting Abandoned – Sunny.
....and you've got to look a long way back for anything else.
Why were they skipping so many jumps?
Health & safety, its deemed not safe to jump the obstacles because the sun gets in the horses & jockeys eyes. I’m not convinced but did see an incident at Cheltenham a couple of months ago when a horse fell at a fence because of the sun.
Why were they skipping so many jumps?
The usual problem of a low sun but it is unusual to have so many obstacles removed. Other races were affected but not as badly as this one.
I presume there must be a minimum number of obstacles that need to be jumped? This race must have been pretty close to that limit.
There used to be a rule that not more than two obstacles per circuit could be bypassed with the permisssion of the stewards.
Following the huge supernova in the 90’s that led to the vast increase in the brightness of the sun, the rule was quietly dropped.
There is nothing now to prevent a NH jump race being run with no obstacles at all. You could for example have all the fences in the home straight bypassed because of low sun, and all the ones in the back straight bypassed because of waterlogging.
I believe the current record is three obstacles, in a two mile hurdle race at Ffos Llas – and Aintree may have matched that at a May evening meeting.
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