Lingfield announce precautionary inspection for Saturday meeting

But officials hopeful for smart seven-race card that features Listed action.

Lingfield Park will hold a precautionary inspection at 7.30am to determine whether racing will take place on Saturday.

The seven-race all-weather card – which features the Listed Quebec Stakes – is due to start at 12.05pm and despite overnight temperatures predicted to plummet once more, on Friday morning clerk of the course George Hill said the track was raceable.

He said: “We were minus 8C this morning and minus 7C yesterday. Overnight temperatures are due to drop to minus 7C or minus 8C tonight.

“We are due to be up to 1C today. We are raceable now, so hopefully we will be racing. It is not an inspection, it is a precautionary inspection.

“People get confused about the terminology. An inspection is if you are not raceable, a precautionary is if you are currently raceable but the forecast suggests you might not.

“The reason I am doing a precautionary is because we have had three nights where we’re near minus 8C and it causes problems, rather than one night. It is a knock-on effect. We had a precautionary on Monday and Wednesday, so we’d be stupid not to, given the forecast of minus 8C.

“Yesterday we got up to 3C, today we’re due to go to 1C, we will get up to 2C if we are lucky. But it is only a short window – only for a couple of hours. The temperature drops again and it will be near zero by four.

“Once the temperature goes above zero, we will get on the track and give it some work today. We’ve got a good four or five hours to work it before it starts freezing again.”

The meeting scheduled for Fairyhouse on Saturday has been abandoned following an inspection.

A statement from the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board read: “The Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board has announced that following an inspection of the track at Fairyhouse this morning the track was found to be unfit for racing due to frost and the meeting scheduled for Saturday December 17 has been cancelled.”

A further abandonment as the freeze continues is the card at Musselburgh on Monday, with the ground described as “completely frozen” after 10 consecutive nights of frost.

Musselburgh boss Bill Farnsworth said he had little choice but to abandon the track’s final meeting of the year:

He said: “It was an easy decision unfortunately. The turf is like concrete and there is no chance we would be able to race on Monday so it’s better to call it off now and give people as much notice as we can.”

In better news, Southwell’s Friday meeting got the go-ahead after an inspection of the Tapeta surface.

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