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Imagine there were quite a few unhappy racegoers.
Passed an inspection at 7.00am and no indication to the public there might still be a problem with frost.
....and you've got to look a long way back for anything else.
I do think they need to make an early call in these instances and abandon if any doubts to avoid people travelling unnecessarily (including horses, staff, owners, bookmakers and tote staff, etc, as well as paying members of the public).
Sounds like it was the jockeys/trainers that overruled the earlier decision at 7am (maybe they should have looked again at 10-11am) but they did put the start times back to give the few shadowed areas of concern more time to defrost.
To play devil’s advocate just a little bit, the forecast was for temps to get up to between 6-8C (which would have thawed the ground in time) but even though it was bright blue skies above, Stewart Machin did state on course that temps did not seem to get much above 3 or 4C. The bright blue sky at this time of year can be misleading as to how warm it actually is or will get – had they had an overcast/cloudy day instead (which requires a mix of both warm and cold air) it is likely temps would have got comparatively warmer a fair bit earlier and racing would have most probably gone ahead and maybe even at the initial starting time too.
Its is rather unfortunate that this second incident of a very late abandonment follows on so quickly after the even worse debacle that was Musselburgh, it again makes the sport look rather unprofessional/amateurish.
I was at Ludlow today and it was extremely frustrating. They probably should have called it off earlier as the jockeys were adamant that it wasn’t safe, particularly on the bends, but they hung on hoping things would improve.
The annoying thing was that, just 30 minutes from the course, the temperature was 9 degrees which would have made it perfectly raceable but that warmer air just never made it to the track.
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