© Photo Healy Racing
There will be no National Hunt racing in Britain on Wednesday after scheduled meetings at Catterick and Hereford were both called off due to frost.
Officials at Catterick were due to inspect the course at 8am, but were able to make an earlier call after track temperatures dropped well below freezing overnight.
The track tweeted: “Unfortunately following overnight temperatures of -5C and forecast temperatures to rise slowly to 2C, racing today has been abandoned.”
No inspection was planned at Hereford overnight, but clerk of the course Tim Long encountered a wintry scene after arriving at the track and was forced to call off proceedings following a 9am check.
He said: “Temperatures overnight dropped lower than we were expecting and on top of that we also had a light covering of snow.
“The weather hasn’t really helped us this morning either as we’ve had a fair bit of cloud cover and temperatures have dropped again, so the frost has bitten that much harder.
“It’s disappointing, but it was pretty obvious at 9am we wouldn’t be able to race.”
Thursday’s meeting at Fakenham is under threat too, with clerk of the course David Hunter calling a 7am inspection.
He said: “It doesn’t look very promising on the forecast and we will inspect at 7am.
“The forecast is for temperatures of minus 5C or 6C overnight, with low daytime temperatures tomorrow.
“We have covered all the vulnerable areas with frost sheets, but it’s impossible to cover all the infilled ground.”
