Haydock Park clerk of the course Dan Cooper admits the decision to water the track on Tuesday now looks “questionable”.
He was speaking at midday on Wednesday as heavy rain fell at the track. The ground at the start of the day was good to firm, good in places after 5mm was applied the previous day.
Cooper said: “We’re currently in the midst of quite a large weather event, a low-pressure system, and there’s a mixture of yellow and amber warnings for rainfall.
“That’s a forecast that late yesterday morning and afternoon really deteriorated for us. They’ve declared on Wednesday morning for Friday on good to firm, good in places and I’ll go and do another afternoon and an evening walk and we’ll be more than likely changing that ground to good very shortly and then I’d imagine there will potentially be good to soft places in there in the morning for declarations for Saturday.
“We then have a dry Thursday afternoon and Friday by the look of things and I’m assuming the ground will stay at the slower side of good after quite a lot of rainfall. We’ve just about reached 10mm now so far so we’re probably in the middle of that storm system now. When I arrived this morning for those declarations we were just basically starting, it was a very slight 1mm in the cup so it’s evolving through the morning.
“Clearly we had a difficult decision to make on Tuesday regarding irrigation and that decision was made in light of the forecast and we were absolutely confident in that being the right decision at the time.
“That forecast has since deteriorated and does make it look like a questionable decision which 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.
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