Interesting f/c from Metcheck for Chelt week!!!

6 or 7mm each day over the course of a few days wont make the going extreme imo .. provided he is not to liberal with the phucking hosepipe! Horses wait all year for this good ground so he'd better not be.

I've seen that Zed. Suspect they will water to the middle of next week then thake a rain check....literally! The 2 week forecast from Metcheck may become a reality, then again it could change completely. I've always understood that outside a prolonged ridge of high pressure, it s not possible to accurately forecast weather in the UK much beyond 3 or 4 days.

The trouble being that if its wrong and he stops watering middle of next week he will risk fastish ground.

Worst weather f/c he could have had imo, if it had arrived the week before it would be fine, im no fan of some clerks but this is a nasty one to get, imo he will water until Friday/Saturday and look at the short term f/c

It just has all the potential to go pear shaped though

FF is right though, the forecast is only useful for the next 3-4 days. At the moment he seems to be holding the ground at good which is sensible and gives him plenty of wiggle room. As long as he maintains that state he only needs to know what the forecast is for the following 2 days.

Unless it hoses down on the weekend and / or Monday, he should get the ground more or less what he wants for day one.

Well that certainly puts the cat amongst the pigeons! Have been concentrating on good ground horses will have to hedge that now. Thks ZZ never gets any easier needle & haystack spring to mind.

could get that horrible false gluepot going like the other year

i'd take any forecast that is nigh on 2 weeks away with a pinch of saly tbh.

or salt

pinch of sally, what a handful

i remember a few years ago (Ebaziyan's Supreme, i think) when i used to bet on the Cheltenham Going market...forecast on the Monday week before Festival (ie 8 days before)- using 4 different sources- was for rain virtually every day and plenty of it on top of ground that was already described as soft...HAD to be SOFT at least judged on forecast, so i lumped on with a saver on heavy

...there was a little rain on the tues but by the weds all the forecasts had changed and there was barely another drop thereafter....thankfully, it suited them politically to stick with soft as official going for start of meeting, but times suggested good-to-soft and it was changed to that by end of Day 1!

There were some funny going reports in 07/8/9 i remember writing about them on Clerkwatch

What is not so funny is that they enter the form book as gospel,some of the readings beggared belief

the problem as I see it is that we have had a change in climate since the course had extensive drainage put in. The drainage was put in to avoid racing days being lost in winter due to water logging. However, with the warmer and drier winters we are now having the likelihood of water logging is low.

If you have ever walked round the track you might have seen these little pipes that stick out all over the place and even on a dry day they are streaming with water pouring into the main drain. It has been my contention for a long time that the course should reverse some of the drainage work and allow more of the water that does hit the course to remain in the soil longer.

I remember the year Captain Cee Bee won the Supreme, it had been dry all week prior to the meet and they had been watering to ensure good to soft which involved putting millions of gallons on. Then on the Tuesday morning they had a shower of rain that lasted til about half an hour before the first race then stopped. The Supreme was OK although you could see the top was false but by the time the 4th race (William Hill Hcp Chase) was run the horses were finishing legless because the going was horrible gluey porrige. The WH race was run 50 seconds slower than standard if I remember correctly which is akin to really heavy.

Anyway, I am praying that something similar does not happen because false going is by far the worst and that's what you get when it rains on watered ground

Agree entirely, the drainage is probably TOO good there now, in fact its probably faster than Goodwood where Seamus ensures that Flat horses get a bit of give

Maybe Jonjo should ask for the Festival could be moved to Sussex for Synchronized


That is the Scenario i fear too Judorick, and im going to leave any bets now until the day

Back in the day when I had time on my hands and I believed, brothers and sisters, I used to compile my own speed ratings.

I remember the fastest jumps ground I ever rated was Cheltenham on the day Mr Mulligan won the Gold Cup.

It was beyond 'Hard'.

The drainage works spectacularly well there.

I was there that day and I had a runner - we nearly pulled out because it was lightning quick

Kautos second Gold Cup was on very quick going too

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNWucheHHcE

This is the softest i remember, they abandoned Racing straight after this race, Tamalin and Brown Lad were due to clash later as Novices and the latter would have loved the muck

Good summary judorick. I don't understand why they didn't design drainage that could be controlled. In mediaeval times they used sluice gates. We seem to have gone backwards since then.

Metcheck are one of the poorist forecasters out there and they are unreliable forecasting 2/3 days in advance never mind 14.  Outwith a massive high pressure NO ONE can accurately forecast this far ahead.  It is purely a "best guess" by one of the poorer forecasters out there.  Monday 10.00am will see the BBC/Met office update which will give a far better picture.

Above is correct, metcheck said it was going to be -8 this week in Aberdeen 2 weeks ago. In reality we had 17 !!

To be fair that's only 25 degrees out?