Cheltenham Racecourse Clerk of the Course Jon Pullin hasn't ruled out the possibility of irrigation being required in the lead-up to this year's four-day Festival.
The biggest jumps meeting of the year kicks off on Tuesday, with the ground officially described as Soft at the six-day stage following over 220mm of rain since the start of the year, but the forecast for the next few days is largely dry with a few light showers anticipated.
Speaking to the Nick Luck Daily Podcast following the day-one acceptance stage on Wednesday, Pullin stated he was happy with the state of conditions and didn't have any major concerns on the weather front.
Pullin said: "The Old Course is soft at the moment but with a little bit of good to soft starting to creep in. The New Course has been slightly quicker, so good to soft on the New, and the Cross Country is a combination of soft ground and good to soft ground.
"So we are starting to dry but with the wet start that we had to the year, there's still plenty of moisture through the soil profile and it's only now that it's starting to dry given we're on consecutive days of dry weather.
"(The forecast is) pretty dry, we're certainly dry today. There's a little bit of rain around Thursday night into Friday potentially, but nothing too significant volume-wise and then the weekend looks dry. It looks dry in to the start of next week as well."
When asked about the chance of irrigation being required to maintain a suitable surface, Pullin said: "As I say, it's been holding onto the moisture so far. I think we're probably getting to the stage where we start to see it dry a little bit quicker now, but we've got it (watering the course) in the back of our minds, we'll see how quickly we start to dry and maybe by the weekend we might need to do something on the New Course.
"I'd be hopeful that the Old Course, as it is holding onto the moisture better than the New, we may not need to do anything - we might just have to do a little bit of selective on that but it's in our minds and we'll monitor conditions."
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