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this saturdays tolworth hurdle meeting at sandown is in serious doubt due to frost. wasent this a thing of the past due to new covers over the whole course?
I suspect that frost covers only work with a light frost, and I would suspect there will be hard frosts up to Saturday.
Coverage is already in place at Sandown, albeit not universally. Per the Sporting Life website;
‘Sandown’s high-profile meeting on Saturday is the latest meeting to be thrown into doubt due to the current cold snap.
There are inspections planned up and down the country for the New Year period and although Sandown clerk of the course Andrew Cooper has not called an official check, he admits conditions need to improve.
“We had a very sharp frost on Monday night and it got down to as low as minus five for a time,” said Cooper.
“As expected, it only rose to around plus three today and we do have areas of frozen ground – we wouldn’t have raced today.
“We have got to see some improvement for us to go ahead but it does look as though every night from now on is going to be at or just below freezing so hopefully Monday night was the coldest night of the week.
“The main problem we have is that the daytime temperatures aren’t rising above three degrees which is not really enough to get things moving in terms of shifting frost.
“We have covered quite an extensive area in front of the stands as that area doesn’t see any sunlight during the day and we have also covered all take-off and landings.
“It is pointless covering any more as the frost is in the ground.
“There is no inspection planned but we will take a further view on that on Wednesday and the earliest time we would look would be Thursday lunchtime.”‘
Cheltenham remain confident, but this is a meeting that fell three times out of four at the turn of the decade, so let’s not get our hopes up just yet.
Jeremy
(graysonscolumn)Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
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gc
The way I read it is that Sandown could have stopped the frost getting into the ground had they acted early enough?
Cheltenham appear to have done so, and their foresight has every chance of paying a dividend. The meetings they lost at the turn of the century would have been pre- ‘the Betfair blanket’ type operation, which has saved a number of meetings since its inception.
As they should be more aware of the situation than most, maybe now is the time the BHA should be making provision for switching the threatened Sandown card to the raceable Cheltenham?Yeah, that was my take on it as well, Reet – almost a tacit admission from the Sandown executive that they were caught napping a bit with the frost issue. Oops!
gc
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
I really don’t see why Sandown deserve any criticism over this.
I live in east Surrey, no more than 30 or 40 miles from Esher, and there’s been a consistent freezing wind from the east for some days now. The ground is bone hard, even in places where piles of leaves are acting as insulation.
The only thing that will save this meeting (or any other turf meeting) is a change towards a westerly wind direction, which seems very unlikely at the moment.
Sandown are quite correct to just concentrate on the "shadiest" part of the course, and hope for the best.
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Can’t really see that Venusian, as nearby Kempton had raced on good ground only 2 days previously?
Whatever the state of the ground at Sandown, I still see no insurmountable reason why efforts aren’t being made to transfer the card to Cheltenham, which still has some prospects of beating the cold snap.I hope Cheltenham doesnt get called off tomorrow, there looks to be some good racing tomorrow.
wouldnt it be a great start to a doom laden 2009 if they could transfer the sandown card to cheltenham if needed. it looks like cheltenham will be on tomorrow after it survived a -7 frost to be raceable today after covering the whole course at the weekend.
i suspect that a ground braking move to transfer the sandown meeting is beyond the bha wooden tops but you never know.Can’t really see that Venusian, as nearby Kempton had raced on good ground only 2 days previously?
Since kempton the cold weather has really settled in. This is the coldest start to winter in the SE for 30 years apparently..and i can believe it
If Cheltenmham does go ahead tomorrow, that will be quite an achievement
I’m sorry but in 2009 as we about to be entering, surely there has to be something more we can be doing. Economically it has to make sense for more and more racecourses to be employing heavy covering for all of the track, espcially for the bigger weekend meetings. They moan about contributions from bookies and want a bigger influence in the Tote, but they are passing up good revenue at a time when less people will be going racing, but people will still find cash to bet. What happened to the "Betfair Sheets"? They seem to be used a couple of years ago then disappear. And surely all grade 1 tracks should have their own.
I’m not suggesting 100% underturf heating as that would be costly to install and could cause problems to the turf for years, but have they ever examined some kind of heated covering like an electric blanket type device? It seems all most places do is put a few sheets and some straw down on take off and landing areas, but that is clearly not enough.
Another thing, why have they not gone back to trying to develop all weather jumping. I know it didn’t work years ago but that was fibresand at its earliest. Surely we’ve moved on from then.I seem to recall that it was much easier finding winners on the all weather jumps or am I mistaken? I clearly remember backing against odds-on shots in preference for something which had proven to run reasonably well on the surface. I think some of the winning distances, particularly on a wet day, were by wide margins.
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Though perfectly raceable today, it seems that tomorrow’s Wincanton meeting is under threat – for no other apparent reason than the lack of frost covers!
While no one’s claiming it’s easy to cover a racecourse, surely it’s not beyond the wit of the BHA to do a little more than sit on their thumbs in such situations?
Agreed Reet – the BHA are hardly what you’d call proactive in most respects, but this one in particular.
Surely if we can put a man on the moon, we can work out an economical and effective way of covering a racecourse?
Hats off to Cheltenham, who had all the bases (and most of the track) covered a long way out for yesterday’s meeting, which I thoroughly enjoyed.
I seem to recall that it was much easier finding winners on the all weather jumps or am I mistaken?
If the race was a Southwell claiming hurdle, and the horse was Suluk, then yes it was.
I’d love to see all-weather jumping be reintroduced on a limited, carefully-monitored trial basis, but fear the more excitable corners of the mainstream press might be all over it even before it starts (“Death Racing Returns”, or some other such ar*se water).
There has been an all-weather steeplechase at Honzrath in southern Germany for a while now – perhaps AngloGerman can confirm what surface they use there (the Post archive doesn’t commit to one), and what the injury / attrition rate in that race has been over the years?
gc
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
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