- This topic has 32 replies, 16 voices, and was last updated 8 years, 1 month ago by
.
- Posts
With all this wet weather around and no sign of it stopping just yet, will Aintree be on and if so what a disaster for the sport it could be if very heavy ground persists for the National.
Chris Cook in The Guardian
When I spoke to Andrew Tulloch, Aintree’s clerk of the course, last night, he jokingly described the going on the Grand National course as “flippers and snorkels stuff”. But the good news is that he doesn’t foresee the race taking place on bad ground a week on Saturday, having been given quite a bit of hope by a dry forecast.
After 22mm of rain on Monday, Tulloch said: “It’s taken it well. The National’s probably soft, possibly heavy in the Canal Turn area. But once you get back across stands-side, you’re verging on good to soft, good, on some of that. With a bit of warmth, this course is like a piece of blotting paper. The Mildmay course is soft but probably tomorrow there’ll be more good to soft about it.”
Tulloch added that the weather hasn’t been as wet on Merseyside as it has in the south in recent weeks and said the forecast is for mostly dry weather into next week, with the temperature clambering into double-figures for some of the time. That’s what I also see in the forecast I use, perhaps 3mm of rain today being followed by five dry days.
So there’s at least hope that the Aintree race won’t descend into a proper slog with just four finishers. Now all we need are some starters. Today brings more bad news on that score, as Paul Nicholls reports As De Mee is out for the rest of the season with a leg injury, meaning Judi Dench will not own a National runner and half a dozen feature writers are frantically casting around for a new subject.By my reckoning, that gives Milansbar and Bryony Frost a place in the National line-up, because five of the top 40 entrants have now been ruled out by connections: Cause Of Causes, Bellshill, Rathvinden, Acapella Bourgeois and As De Mee.
Calm down calm down!. Turftrax on Aintree site shows National course as Soft with G/S patches and Mildmay course as G/S with soft patches and there is no more significant rain forecast.
If you watched the Irish National when there were lots of fallers, pulled up and only 8 finished out of 30 over 3m 5f what would it look like over 4m 2f. Not good I would suggest
With zero fatalities, so what’s the worry? We can’t be afraid of the idea of horses falling in jump races. Besides the 2016 race was run under pretty heavy conditions and there were still plenty of finishers and again zero fatalities.
https://www.netweather.tv/weather-forecasts/uk/7-day/L95AS~L95AS
Looks like 20mm rain Tomorrow/Sunday and 10mm Wednesday according to above
Hi Andy, it’s a great time of year to stay in and watch Kelso on RUK swiftly followed by a full slate of games on mlb.tv! Chris
It could be a bog out there and they’ll still give the going as soft, good to soft in places. The BHA will be desperate for there to be at least one big race this season not run on officially heavy going.
I think you have a point there Peter, I think the Clerk Of The Course is being
a bit overly optimistic. I put a bit in the Grand National thread back on the 4th,
my thoughts on it at that time were that I couldn’t see how it could be anything
other than very soft or heavy because of the conditions at that time and also that
a fair bit of rain was forecast. The jumps meetings on that day at Catterick and
Wetherby, albeit about 100 miles away were both cancelled, one was waterlogged and
the other flooded. Tomorrow’s meetings at Hereford Hexham and Southwell, 2 are soft
and 1 heavy. It’s raining at Aintree now and there is rain, some of it heavy, forecast
tomorrow and further rain on Friday and Saturday. I can’t see how it can be anything
other that heavy.Time is running out for one of my ante post bets, Mysteree, who needs it pretty bottomless,
and needs 12 to come out between now and Thursday. I can’t see that happening unless the
ground clearly deteriorates and it scares off enough. Either way, I think you will need to be
on something that that goes on heavy.Well I have just checked the weather at Aintree and it is currently raining and it is forecast all day.
I cannot see it being anything but heavy which will lead to some not very nice viewing if past Nationals are to go by when it’s been heavy. Exhausted horses being the main oneHexham off, Southwell off, Nottingham off, Leicester inspecting all because of rain yet somehow they are predicting good to soft. Have they got some huge brolly there covering the whole course.
Morning I live a few miles from Aintree. It’s been raining since 7pm last night Monday 11.27am Tuesday morning still rain just persistent. With more rain possible tomorrow, Thursday and Friday I think we can say the going will be heavy. So how many finishes I’ll say 8.
We need better going descriptions. How easy is it for clerk of course to just describe it as soft, heavy or good. When Timeform will sometimes give a different description. According to the clock after first few races. maybe we need a sizemolgist and not a clerk at each course.
Hexham off, Southwell off, Nottingham off, Leicester inspecting all because of rain yet somehow they are predicting good to soft
Aintree is a free-draining course situated on light, sandy soil derived from the geologically distinctive Shirdley Hill Sand Formation which, incidentally, is why there was a thriving glass making industry in the area
Hence heavy Aintree going, on the rare occasions it actually occurs, is not as taxing as heavy going at courses on the more common clay/loam soils: relatively easy to plough through and jump out of
Allied to the fact that this winter has seen a preponderance of precipitation from the East rather than the usual Atlantic west and that the next few days in Liverpool are likely to be predominately fine and relatively warm in a usefully drying easterly breeze I would be a tad surprised if the going come Saturday is worse than GS/S
What’s wrong with heavy going anyway? That Earth Summit-Suny Bay match in 1998 was a terrific spectacle
Post of the month right there
Sand base and cover of Aintree doesn’t look to be doing too much of a trick so far Drone.
Going sticks are showing basically heavy at the moment. Hopefully a few drying days will help.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.