The cross-country race scheduled for Cheltenham a week on Friday is at risk because of the unusually dry autumn. The racing surface for the unusual contest is hard in places and only significant quantities of rain over the next 10 days will prevent it from being abandoned.
Simon Claisse, Cheltenham’s clerk of the course, said on Monday that the priority for irrigation has to be the Old Course, on which all the other races at the track’s three-day November meeting will take place. That part of the racecourse still has good to firm places after regular irrigation over the past two months, amounting to more than eight inches in all.
“I’m told there is the possibility of some rainfall this Sunday and Monday,” Claisse said, “but that is also what we were told last Monday and that rain petered out by the end of the week. We will be putting on 5mm or 6mm [on the Old Course] this week because it will be too late, by the beginning of next week, to do anything if that rain doesn’t come.
“The forecast rain will keep the chase and hurdles tracks in very good nick. The cross-country would need considerably more and we will have to give consideration, next week, to the question of whether we can provide safe ground for that race.
“The cross-country course is currently firm, hard in places. If we have to continue to water the Old Course, we won’t have any chance of getting the cross-country back to good to firm.”
Claisse pointed out that this autumn, while unusually dry, is not unique. In 2003, the ground was too fast to stage races on the cross-country track in November and again in December, when the rest of the racecourse was still being irrigated a fortnight before Christmas.
Claisse added that Cheltenham will work with the BHA to arrange an alternative race for cross-country-type horses, which could be run if the cross-country cannot take place. In 2003, that took the form of a four-mile handicap chase for horses rated up to 135.
Entries for the alternative race will be taken at the same time as those for the rest of the card, though a final decision about whether it will be needed will not be made until next week.
