Haydock on alert for the weekend with weather warning in place

Haydock’s clerk of the course Dan Cooper has admitted the decision to water on Tuesday ahead of racing on Friday and Saturday now looks “questionable” with rain having hit the Merseyside track on Wednesday morning – with more on the way.

The going was good to firm, good in places and five millimetres of water was applied to the track, with some rain forecast.

However, the weather outlook changed for the worse and an amber weather warning is now place, ahead of a card that is due to see the return of the unbeaten Vandeek plus a high-class cast for the Temple Stakes.

“We’re currently in the midst of a large weather event. There’s a mixture of yellow and amber weather warnings and the forecast really deteriorated for us yesterday in the late morning and afternoon,” said Cooper, speaking on a Zoom call at lunchtime.

“We’ve essentially got a position where they’ve declared this morning (for Friday) on good to firm, good in places, I’ll go on another afternoon walk and then an evening walk.

“We’ll more than likely be changing the ground to good very shortly and I should imagine by the morning it will be good, potentially good to soft in places. Then we have a dry Thursday and Friday by the looks of things – I’m assuming that the ground will probably stay at the slower side of good.

“We had a difficult decision to make on Tuesday with irrigation. The decision was made in light of the forecast and we were confident in that being the right decision, but that same forecast has since deteriorated which makes the decision look questionable. I understand and I have to say it was made with the detail that was at hand at the time.”

Warwick called off Wednesday’s jumps fixture after 42.5mm of rain left the track waterlogged in places, while heavy rain also accounted for Gowran’s Flat card.