© Photo Healy Racing
Salisbury was forced to call off Thursday’s afternoon card after persistent heavy rain throughout the morning left the course waterlogged.
The Group Three Ire-Incentive, It Pays To Buy Irish Dick Poole Fillies’ Stakes was set to be the highlight of the fixture, with Ralph Beckett’s impressive Newmarket winner Tabiti favourite to make a successful leap into stakes company and William Haggas’ Newbury scorer Jewelry also an exciting contender in the line-up.
However, with 18 millimetres of rain falling prior to a lunchtime inspection, standing water had formed in the low points of the undulating Wiltshire track and left the ground unraceable.
Clerk of the course Jeremy Martin said: “We are up to nearly 20mm now with a further 10-15mm due throughout the afternoon, so basically a huge volume of rain.
“Although it fell on good to firm ground and the vast majority of the track has taken it well, we have undulations and low points – particularly in the dip in the lead up to the Fibresand crossing – where water was beginning to pond.
“We raced here on Friday up the middle and where there was a little bit of wear, it was starting to get unstable ground due to the volume of rain we have had. We had no chance of racing this afternoon really.
“This was meant to be our 13th meeting of the season and our annual highlight, but we’ve had a fair bit of racing and there is only so much rain a racecourse can take. Once the heavy rain keeps falling and falling and starts ponding, the ground can’t cope.”
Martin went on: “Yesterday when I walked it at 5pm it was beautiful good to firm ground and looked fabulous. It was even on the fast side of good to firm as we knew a bit of rain was coming and hadn’t done anything to it for three or four days.
“This system of rain was expected to be over northern France earlier in the week, but it has just tracked north and clobbered us big time. It just got worse and worse as the morning went on.”
