Warwick's Classic Chase Day falls victim to the weather for the second year running
Saturday's Classic Chase Day, with five of the seven races set to be broadcast on ITV4, was abandoned after falling overnight temperatures left parts of the Warwick track frozen and unraceable.
The course had passed an inspection on Friday afternoon, although the take-offs on some of the fences down the back straight were frozen. With helpers brought in from Cheltenham and Stratford racecourses, frost covers were put down, but the track failed the second inspection scheduled for 8 o'clock on raceday.
Explaining the decision, clerk of the course Nessie Chanter said “On Thursday, we had a really foggy day which saw no movement in the ground and had areas on the take-offs in the back straight where the frost hadn't lifted, which we tried to heat up. We had a contingency plan to use the outer hurdles track, which we covered overnight, but that has now frozen which meant we couldn't navigate our way down the back.”
In addition to the long-distance William Hill Half A Mill Classic Handicap Chase worth £100,000, for which the sponsors were offering a £500,000 bonus if the winner went on to land the Randox Grand National at Aintree in April, the £75,000 Hampton Novices' Chase and a qualifier for the final of the Pertemps Network Handicap Hurdle run at the Cheltenham Festival in March were also lost.
This is the second year running that the meeting, one of the highlights of the Warwick season, has been abandoned. The weather had been kinder on New Year's Eve when a record crowd of 8,218 packed the stands and, whilst Saturday's attendance would have been lower, it was, nevertheless, a blow to the course and officials will be hoping that the weather improves before the next meeting scheduled for Friday 23 January.
The day's other televised meeting at Kempton Park went ahead and Shelfield Green trainer Dan Skelton saddled A Pai De Nom in the feature £100,000 Coral Lanzarote Handicap Hurdle. Despite being sent off favourite, he could only finish third behind easy winner Iberico Lord but, with Precious Man winning an earlier race, Skelton ended the day on 111 winners and prize money of nearly £2.5m for the season.