Rain would greatly help Newbury’s cause ahead of the weekend

Berkshire track ‘like a thirsty hippopotamus’.

Newbury ground staff will be working hard all week to ensure the best possible conditions ahead of the Coral Gold Cup meeting at the weekend.

Saturday’s fixture at Ascot was hit by high-profile non runners as the ground dried out by the hour.

Despite over 30 millimetres of rain at Newbury last week, the ground is currently good, and clerk of the course Keith Ottesen admits he and his team are in for a challenging week.

“Because of the drought in the summer there is still a moisture deficit and we are catching up,” said Ottesen on Sunday afternoon.

“The track is like a thirsty hippopotamus, it just can’t get enough, you fill it up and it gulps it down.

Newbury's jumps track was parched in the summer
Newbury’s jumps track was parched in the summer (Zac Goodwin/PA)

“We’ve had spells of rain in the last couple of weeks, but they are exactly what it needs – for 12 months now we’ve been behind the amount of rainfall that it needs.

“We’ve all seen how far behind they are in the south of England and central, way behind. We get some rain, like we have over the last couple of weeks, you might go good to soft like Cheltenham did but within a day or two it’s dried up to good.

“So we’re working away, we’ll keep watering and keep hoping for more rain. We’ve got an unsettled forecast with rain at times but I couldn’t pinpoint how much, we’ll have to wait and see how much we get.

“We’ll keep working away and at the moment it’s good ground. The fact is it has never been as dry as it is in certain parts of the country, we are in unprecedented times.

“What we’re dealing with now is a phenomenon, we’re coming off the back of record temperatures in the summer, but I think that phenomenon will become normal in the future because times have changed. World leaders are talking about climate change regularly.

“On Tuesday we had 20mm of rain, where they galloped was good to soft ground and it was great but a couple of days later it had dried out.

“We’ll keep working at it but that is where we are, good ground.”

L'Homme Presse was a non runner at Ascot on Saturday
L’Homme Presse was a non runner at Ascot on Saturday (Nigel French/PA)

Venetia Williams was among those to make withdrawals at Ascot, taking out her Cheltenham Festival winner L’Homme Presse.

“It wasn’t a huge surprise, we half expected it,” she told Racing TV.

“The problem is we’re coming off the back of the driest summer for a number of years. Unless it rains the day before or on the day the rain just disappears because there’s such a deficit of moisture in the ground.

“Our horse has had a tendon injury in the past so we’ve got to be careful. It’s no secret I don’t do summer racing because tendon injuries usually occur on good ground and it’s not for me and our horses.

“He’ll have an entry in the Rehearsal Chase (at Newcastle) and if that doesn’t work out there are other options.”

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