Battling to keep show on the road

Lydia Hislop13 April 2012

Racing's rulers today pledged to press ahead with the sport's controversial resumption amid the ever-escalating foot-and-mouth epidemic.

This is despite the dispiriting loss of the Cheltenham Festival and the fact less than half of next week's scheduled race meetings will take place.

Just nine of the 19 fixtures programmed for next week are currently on target. Among that number, Newton Abbot may cancel their Wednesday card, echoing the decisions of Taunton (Monday), Sedgefield (Tuesday) and Fakenham (Friday) to abandon due to close ties with their local farming communities.

The British Horseracing Board (BHB) faces a pressing problem on Saturday week when both feature meetings must be cancelled due to their host courses, Newcastle and Uttoxeter, falling within the infected areas that surround a confirmed outbreak of the highly infectious disease.

Re-launch has been resolutely lowkey to date, with a single all-weather Flat card providing the only domestic entertainment on each of the two days since Wednesday's resumption. Bookmakers have relied heavily on cards from South Africa, Italy, France and Dubai.

The loss of Sandown's National Hunt card through waterlogging today would potentially represent a major setback to continuity. The BHB's decision to resume activities has attracted widespread criticism, particularly among the farming community, despite having the full support of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) and scientific analysis.

"We remain absolutely committed to the continuation of racing," insisted BHB communications manager, Alan Delmonte. "The fact that the Cheltenham Festival has been postponed has no impact on the staging of other fixtures. The Festival was cancelled only because Cheltenham could not comply with our foot-and-mouth instructions.

"Our criteria remain clear. Any racecourse that stands in an infected area or cannot comply for any reason with the instructions has its meeting cancelled by the BHB. Racing is able to go ahead at all other tracks, although individual racecourses can call off their fixtures if they feel uncomfortable with going ahead."

Additional fixtures, such as yesterday's card at Wolverhampton that averted a blank day, are now expected to be scheduled for next week.

"Whether abandonments are caused by weather or foot-and-mouth disease, the principle of levy generation remains the same. We know that two fixtures per day is better than one and three better still to provide sufficient betting opportunities," Delmonte said.

"These are exceptional circumstances, but we know trainers are desperate to run their horses . "

BHB race-planners are still left guessing on how to rearrange this month's programme while no peak in the number of outbreaks appears imminent.

With a pool of around 20 tracks to work with - those that do not fall in infected areas, can comply with the sanitisation instructions and are willing to race - the BHB may reschedule the more important races or create new ones to accommodate the needs of the horse population.

But postponement brings about its own problems. Just as Uttoxeter's Midlands Grand National on Saturday week may not be rearranged due to fears of a clash with the real thing at Aintree, Cheltenham's preferred 24-26 April date for the rescheduled Festival conflicts with both Punchestown in Ireland and Sandown's Whitbread Gold Cup meeting two days later.

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