Sandown call precautionary inspection ahead of Saturday card

PA Sport Reporters
January 4, 2024 2:57 pm

Weather warning issued as rain forecast at the Esher venue.

Sandown’s feature meeting on Saturday must survive an 8am precautionary inspection on Friday.

With the going at the Esher venue raceable but already very testing, a new band of rain is due to arrive on Thursday evening which has seen the Met Office to issue a yellow weather warning.

Clerk of the course Andrew Cooper, speaking at 2.30pm on Thursday, said: “I think it’s a sensible approach to call the inspection given the uncertainty of the volume of rain that we may see through the rest of the day here.

“It looks like it’s about to start here looking at all the radars, so it is on its way and there is talk of 20 millimetres plus potentially.

“You’d race here today, you would have done every day this week, but there are parts on both courses that are approaching the limits of their capacity to take any more rain which can’t be avoided – we have to be able to race through them, we can’t doll them off and these areas are primarily in the home straight.

“The rain should have finished in the early hours of Friday so we can have a look first thing and see where we have got to – if necessary we can have a further look later in the day or whatever, all possible outcomes you wouldn’t rule out.

“Once that has gone through it does look a dry picture up to and including Saturday and beyond, it just depends on the scale of rain we see.”

Wincanton’s Saturday fixture is also in doubt with their clerk of the course Daniel Cooper calling an inspection called for 8am on Saturday, also due to a yellow warning for rain.