Cheltenham - Latest on ground conditions.

Simon Claisse, Cheltenham´s Clerk of the Course, reported today: 'The current going is good, good to firm in places with a going stick reading of 9 on Thursday. We were expecting a covering of snow last night, giving way to rain of which between eight to 10 millimetres is expected to fall. If that rain today materialises, we won´t water. If the rain doesn´t come then the probability is that we will water unless they´re shifting the forecast and saying what you didn´t get on Friday you´ll get over the weekend. Based on the current forecast, we´re not going to water again.'

Watering of Cheltenham´s Old and New Courses started on Wednesday, March 3, and was completed on Friday, March 5. Over a million gallons of water was put on 50 acres of ground, the equivalent of between 24 and 28 millimetres of rainfall.

The Old Course is used for the first two days of the Festival -Tuesday and Wednesday, March 16 & 17 - while racing switches to the New Course on Thursday, March 18. Racegoers will notice a change to the fences on the New Course. It looks like they have been made narrower but this is an optical illusion.These fences have been widened by between two and five yards in preparation for two days of racing on the New Course in 2005 when the Festival becomes a four-day event for the first time. The new sections of the fences are not being used this year and therefore are behind the running rail.