Cheltenham to start watering

Cheltenham's clerk of the course Simon Claisse will starting watering the track as early as Wednesday as he begins to prepare for next month's Festival.

There are only three weeks until the key meeting of the National Hunt season and Prestbury Park is currently quicker underfoot than ideal.

"As expected, warmer weather is on the way and I think it will be 15 or 16C by the end of the week," Claisse said.

"We were pretty much frozen from Festival Trials Day up to last Tuesday and we will start watering the course from Wednesday, primarily to active the fertiliser we put on the ground.

"We are currently good, good to firm in places and without between six and seven millimetres of water, we would be good to firm by Monday.

"We have had a very dry February and we are trying to maintain the ground at good."