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Looks like that heavy rainburst has gotten into the ground on the Mildmay course – the first two races (pre rain) were both over 5.6 and 5.4 seconds slow whilst the last 3 races have been 10.7, 15.1 and 16 seconds slow.
Hard to say how soft the National course will be as it will be the only race run on it today (so the ground will not have been opened up before the rain came) but you have to believe that it will be softer than the official good to soft description and thus those wanting decent ground are going to find it a lot more testing now.
Sandown is currently watering (7.5mm twice a week) on ground described today as ‘good’ (6.8 on Turftrax reading) ahead of the jumps finale on Saturday, no doubt to ensure that they don’t have to run on the dreaded good ground.
I guess that is rather unfortunate for any of those flat horses running on the Friday that were hoping for naturally fast Spring ground in mid April.
Non Runners at Newbury because it’s too quick. Non runners at Ayr because it’s too slow. What a joke.
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.
Sounds like Sandown have a difficult balancing act with the watering for this weekend.massive amounts being needed to keep the chase course good but that may not suit the flat people in the areas where the courses cross so it could be good to firm in places on Saturday
4mm of water put onto Chester last night and now there is an issue with the ground on the home turn, with racing delayed and jockeys and officials walking all over the course.
Chester Clerk of the Course Eloise Quayle:
“We were going to water anyway tonight, but we’ll be reviewing the amount we’re going to put down.
“I’d expect we will be putting on more than we originally planned to do, probably in the region of 10mm.”
Almost half an inch of water onto the ground!
However did we manage in the era when racing went ahead without the surface being artificially altered?
10mm with rain forecast, it’s got to be incompetence despite Chamberlin & Chapman saying what a great job she does.
As Hayley Turner said there was no need to put 3mm on last night with rain forecast.
We never seemed to have a problem producing good to firm ground for flat racing years ago, now we can’t even have it.
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