No inspection is planned ahead of the first day of Cheltenham’s valuable International meeting on Friday, despite 6mm of rain falling at the course on Thursday, with as much again forecast overnight.
The first day of the November meeting was lost to persistent rain, the first abandonment at Cheltenham due to waterlogging since New Year’s Day in 2013. With the going no worse than good-to-soft on the chase and hurdle courses overnight, there are few concerns about Friday’s card.
“It’s a huge help that we will be racing on ground [the New course] that’s
not been run on since the beginning of May,” Simon Claisse, the track’s clerk of the course, said on Thursday evening.
“We’ve had 6mm in the last 18 hours and we could get as much again in the
next 18 hours, but that’s a far cry from the sort of volume we had in October and November. Before the October meeting it was 35mm in 24 hours, and in November it was 42mm in 18 hours. We’d have no concerns about another six or seven millimetres at all.”
The ante-post favourite, Riders Onthe Storm, will face 15 opponents in Saturday’s feature event at Cheltenham, the Caspian Caviar Gold Cup, after the final declarations for the weekend’s big handicap chase on Friday.
The six-year-old, who joined Nigel Twiston-Davies from Tom Taaffe’s yard in Ireland at the start of the season, has been raised 13lb in the weights since winning a valuable November handicap at Aintree. He is top-priced at 4-1 ahead of Cepage (7-1), who was one-and-three-quarter lengths behind Riders Onthe Storm last time but is now 5lb better off.
Friday’s best bets will appear here by 9.30am