Musselburgh forced to abandon two-day meeting Officials at Musselburgh have been forced to call off their Cheltenham Festival Trials meeting on Saturday and Sunday as the cold snap bites National Hunt racing hard. With temperatures dipping well below freezing at the Edinburgh track on successive nights and little prospect of it warming up sufficiently until next week, it was an easy decision for clerk of the course Harriet Graham. “Very sadly we’ve had to abandon our Cheltenham Trials weekend because of frozen ground,” said Graham in a video posted from the course’s official Twitter account. “We’ve tried really hard to get this meeting on, we put fleece on the whole course, but unfortunately it was minus 7C last night and the night before and the frost has got underneath the fleeces. “There’s no prospect of the temperatures rising enough over the next few days for us to get racing on on Saturday or Sunday. “It’s such a great shame, it is such an exciting weekend, but we can’t beat the weather, I’m afraid.” The British Horseracing Authority’s head of racing Paul Johnson responded to queries about possibly rescheduling the meeting by saying: “I can confirm that we will not be rescheduling this meeting, but it may be that we add in a fixture in the region. “That could end up being at Musselburgh and races will be determined by race programme need. Same applies in all regions.” Musselburgh general manager Bill Farnsworth said: “Musselburgh will seek the opportunity to stage an extra fixture which will meet the needs of horses that would otherwise have raced at our bet365 Scottish Cheltenham Trials weekend.” Thursday was a second consecutive day of no National Hunt racing in Britain, with Fakenham and Wincanton both frozen off. After Wednesday’s abandonments at Plumpton and Leicester, the last jumps cards to take place were therefore on Tuesday — at Newcastle and in Northern Ireland at Down Royal. In advance of a planned inspection at 8am on Thursday, Catterick announced its fixture on Friday has been abandoned after temperatures dropped to -7C overnight in North Yorkshire. Chepstow has also announced a Thursday inspection, at 2pm, for Friday’s scheduled card. The course is currently described as “frozen”. Lingfield will conduct a precautionary inspection at 8am on Friday, for that afternoon’s all-weather card, because of forecast overnight snow. The Dublin Racing Festival at Leopardstown on Saturday and Sunday is still set to go ahead, although after at one time being threatened by snow, frost could now be the issue. As a result Saturday’s running order has been amended with the bumper and hurdles races taking place earlier on the card.
