Storm Claudia threatening day two of Cheltenham meeting

A precautionary inspection will be held at Cheltenham tomorrow morning ahead of the scheduled seven-race Paddy Power Gold Cup card.

Strong winds and persistent rain leading produced by Storm Claudia up to the Friday of the two-day meeting continued throughout the afternoon, as conditions at the track were inevitably worsened by a day’s racing on the Prestbury Park turf.

With more rain forecast, officials will examine the track at 7.30am before the planned second afternoon of action.

“We’ve had 12mm of rain through the day to add to the 7mm overnight and as we’ve been racing this afternoon we’ve opened up the track,” clerk of the course Jon Pullin told Racing TV.

“We’ve still got further rain to come, possibly until midnight and we could see some heavy spells in the next couple of hours. Having opened it up it makes sense to have a look in the morning.

“The forecast is saying it should be drying up from 1am and we do know that once this track gets a bit of a window without any rain it does start to drain and hopefully that will be the case.

“This is precautionary, we’ve raced today and we do have that dry window. I’d be hopeful we’ll be OK for tomorrow. We’ll do everything we can to make a decision as early as we can.”

Navan, due to stage the Fortria Chase and with it the reappearance of Marine National, will also inspect at the same time due to a Status Yellow rain warning from Met Eireann.

Clerk of the course Paddy Graffin, said: “Since our ground update at 7.30am this morning, there has been a further 6mm of rain at Navan.

“The ground currently remains soft to heavy, however, due to the Status Yellow rain warning from Met Eireann in place for County Meath which runs through to the early hours of tomorrow morning, we will hold a precautionary inspection at 7.30am ahead of racing.

“This is a precautionary measure due to the forecast but the track is currently fit for racing and the latest update from Met Eireann suggests we could get approximately a further 10-15mm of rain in the area.”