Catterick latest meeting to be frozen off

Catterick’s jumps meeting on Thursday has been abandoned due to a frozen track, while Wolverhampton will have second inspection on Tuesday ahead of their afternoon card.

The North Yorkshire racecourse succumbed to the weather following the freezing temperatures across Britain, which resulted in no racing action at all on Monday.

“It was -6C overnight. We’ve had progressive hard frost down to -6C with wind chill, but last night was just general -6C,” clerk of the course Fiona Needham said.

“I mean it’s deep in the ground and although it’s not forecast to be as cold, it is still forecast to be below freezing so there’s no prospect of it coming out.”

Wolverhampton, which failed a second check on Monday, will undergo another inspection at 10am, with racing starting an hour later than planned at 2.15pm should the all-weather meeting get the go-ahead.

“We’ve got another inspection at 10am,” Dunstall Park clerk of the course Fergus Cameron said.

“Having worked the track overnight and temperatures having risen quite significantly, we had a further three-quarters of an inch of snow this morning.

“So the forecast is for temperatures to keep rising to 3C to 4C this afternoon and having worked the track overnight, the track was good underneath.

“Currently with this snow we aren’t raceable, but given the temperatures we’ve decided to go for a further inspection at 10am and we’ll put racing back by an hour.”

Huntingdon have called a 9am inspection on Wednesday morning ahead of Friday’s jumps card.