Sandown forced to abandon Saturday’s card

PA Sport Reporters
January 5, 2024 8:38 am

Early decision made at Esher venue.

Sandown’s meeting on Saturday, set to feature the GBP 100,000 Unibet Veterans’ Handicap Chase, has been abandoned due to a waterlogged track.

Clerk of the course Andrew Cooper and his team called an 8am precautionary inspection on Friday as though the track was raceable at the time, heavy rain was forecast for Thursday evening.

The predicted worst case scenario was up to 20mm of rain, but even more fell at the Esher venue with 34mm recorded and it has left the course saturated with no hope of improvement in time for racing.

“We’ve had 34 millimetres of rain, which started at about 2pm yesterday afternoon and finally eased off at about 4am this morning,” said Cooper.

“I would say there are multiple areas on both courses (chase and hurdle tracks) of waterlogged, false ground and areas of standing water and there are no options in terms of realignment.

“I think there is an element of judgement that it isn’t going to be materially better in 24 hours and we don’t think it will be sufficiently better in 24 hours.

“It’s basically saturated ground that is going to sit like that for a number of days now.

“It was just the wrong amount of rain at the wrong time for us, on top of what has already been a fairly wet spell, certainly since Christmas anyway.”