Big freeze continues to affect British racing The current cold snap continues to play havoc with racing cross channel, with the scheduled two-day Ayr fixture already called off and inspections planned for Saturday's meetings at Sandown and Wincanton. However today's card at Folkestone has beaten the freeze. Officials at Sandown are hopeful of beating the frost, with the Blue Square Tolworth Hurdle the feature on a decent card. A precautionary inspection will be held at 8am on raceday after an initial look at noon yesterday found conditions had improved with 95% of the track raceable. The course will be covered tonight in a bid to protect it from a forecast sharp frost. Clerk of the course Andrew Cooper said yesterday, 'We've been a degree or so better today than we thought at up to about four degrees. Tomorrow has been suggested as a four or five degree day but with a cold night to follow.' 'We would be quite vulnerable without the covers down with a frost forecast on Friday night. It has improved all day today and we'll take stock of things in the morning. We could do with plus temperatures again tomorrow to sort out the last remaining bits of the track.' Wincanton will stage an 8.30am precautionary inspection tomorrow after clerk of the course Barry Johnson looked at the track this morning. 'We are raceable today, but the one down side is that it could get to as low as minus-three degrees overnight.' Meanwhile, today's meeting at Folkestone goes ahead after course officials ditched plans for an early-morning precautionary inspection. Clerk of the course Neil MacKenzie Ross could not justify assessing conditions at 7.30am after a frost-free night at the Kent circuit. 'We went to zero degrees but it did not cause us any problems. We cancelled the inspection so as to get out the information as quickly as possible.'
