Cheltenham inspect

Officials at Cheltenham have called an early morning precautionary inspection ahead of Friday's card due to the threat of a severe frost.

Temperatures could drop as low as minus four overnight and clerk of the course Simon Claisse is particularly concerned about the prospect of frost on the cross-country course.

'We are going to have a look at 8am as temperatures at dawn could be as low as minus four, rising to three or four degrees by the start of racing,' said Claisse.

'That wouldn't cause us a concern for the new course where the chases and hurdles will be held as it's either covered or is fresh ground, but we have only covered limited parts of the cross-country track. That would be our main concern provided the weather we have overnight is no worse than forecast.'

'We would have been raceable on all courses yesterday and today, and we actually had a minus five on Wednesday morning but we were okay. This is going to be our third consecutive night of frost though, and it is a severe one.'

Tomorrow's meeting at Doncaster is also subject to an 8am precautionary inspection due to the threat of frost.

The South Yorkshire track is currently raceable, and clerk of the course David Williams said, 'The forecast is for it drop to around minus one tonight with day temperatures tomorrow of around plus two, with a wind chill factor of minus two.'

'We are going to have a precautionary inspection at 8am in case the temperature gets any lower than forecast. It's clear at the moment but it is due to cloud over in the middle of the night so hopefully it does before it starts freezing.'

'We haven't raced on the track for a while and we have a good covering of grass so we would be very hopeful at this stage.'