The biggest week of the horse racing year is feeling the chill of the wintry weather more than most with a cold snap causing sleepless nights at Cheltenham.
Irish horses are favourite with the bookmakers for more than half of the races starting tomorrow and continuing through to Friday but there are fears that some of the racing may be lost and have to be rescheduled as the track saw temperatures overnight as low as -3 degrees.
Covers have been put down over the landing and take off areas around each of the fences on both the courses used this week. A total of 630 individaul covers have been laid down to offer as much protection as possible against frost.
The area under cover is 65 acres in total and it will take two and a half hours tomorrow morning to lift them and hope that they have done their job in allowing racing to go ahead.
Tens of thousands of Irish racing fans will travel over to the Cotswolds in South West England in the coming days hoping to see a repeat of Ireland’s dominance of the event in recent years.
Fast ferry sailings today have already been cancelled but other services are expected to be able to accommodate passengers. Many of the horses travelling over have already done so.
Hurricane Fly and Quevega are two of the travelling team’s main hopes on the opening days and fingers are crossed all over that the sharp drop in temperature will not impact upon the Festival.
The second day of the Festival was lost in 2008 after high winds tore down a temporary structure and the track was declared unsafe for racing. On that occasion the six races scheduled for that day were transferred to the Thursday and Friday.
The entire festival was lost in 2001 though that was as a result of the Foot and Mouth outbreak that stopped so may events that year, including the St Patricks day parade that was postponed until May.
The Festival’s importance in terms of business was highlighted over the weekend when almost all advertising in the sports pages of Irish newspapers and across online sites was taken up by bookmakers.
On Thursday morning, Sport for Business will look at the issue of betting tax and sports betting’s impact on sport, arising out of last Thursday’s EU Conference on Sport at Dublin Castle.
Fingers Crossed for Freeze Free Festival
