Heads Up - Lingfield Saturday

Lingfield's Derby Trial card on Saturday faces an inspection at 10am on Wednesday morning after a deluge of rain fell during racing on Tuesday.

The going was changed to soft, heavy in places on the straight course and soft, good to soft in places at 9am on Tuesday morning following 7.2mm of rain overnight, but a thunderstorm that halted racing brought a further 18mm of rain. More downpours are forecast at Lingfield, where four races are scheduled to be shown on ITV on Saturday.

Speaking at 7.30pm on Tuesday evening, Lingfield's clerk of the course George Hill said: "It's very hard to tell with these downpours how much you're going to get as they're very localised.

"Today we were forecast 5-30mm, but we had 18mm in 30-40 minutes during racing, so it's not out of the equation that we could end up closer towards the 30mm mark by close of play.

"I'm leaving the office now and we've just had another sharp downpour and it seems in the forecast there could be a couple more expected between now and 10am. I don't know totals but it's going to be a couple of millimetres either way, or maybe more.

"We've got an inspection planned for 10am that will involve the BHA course inspector in attendance and we'll update everyone in the morning once myself and the course inspector have had a chance to have a look."

It comes just two weeks after Sandown's card, which was due to feature the Classic Trial, was also cancelled due to sustained rainfall.

How can they make a decision three days ahead?

Also,seems to me more race courses need to do what York did a few years ago ,following a washed out

meeting, and install proper drainage.

It's been moved to AW, so it's ON. But hardly relevant now as proper trials if they ever were.