RIPON AND PERTH FALL FOUL OF WEATHER Ripon's meeting on Saturday has become the latest to fall foul of the current spell of wet weather. Officials inspected the course at 11.30am today and decided there was little chance of the course being raceable in two days' time. Clerk of the course James Hutchinson said: "The course is still currently unraceable, there are still patches of standing water which we consider to be unsafe for racing. "We think there is only a small chance of being able to race on Saturday given dry weather and there is more rain forecast so unfortunately we are abandoning the meeting." Ripon were also forced to abandon their meeting on April 20 because of waterlogging. Perth's meeting tomorrow has been abandoned due to waterlogging, washing out the Scottish track's entire three-day Spring Festival. Clerk of the course Sam Morshead said: "We've abandoned, we had another 8mm of rain overnight, the course is waterlogged and unsafe at the moment and will take three or four days to get raceable." It is the second successive year that all three days of Perth's most prestigious meeting of the season have been lost to the weather. "It's just extremely unlucky," Morshead added. "We could have raced almost any day in March and April but just at the end of April when you might be thinking about having to water we've had ridiculous rain, about two inches in the last week. "It hits the racecourse hard in many ways and there is obviously some fallout but we have a very good team and we'll get back up and look forward to a good meeting in May and a good summer."
