Haydock are formulating plans to investigate what caused the issue at Saturday's meeting which led to three races being abandoned, and decide how to proceed with their two-day fixture scheduled for next weekend.
In the the first race on the card, Friendly Soul stumbled in the William Hill Epic Boost British EBF Hedge Of Oak Stakes having taken a false step and was pulled up by Oisin Murphy.
Shortly after the winner Dreamasar passed the winning post, a party of officials, trainers and jockeys held an inspection.
A hole was found, thought to be linked to a drainage issue, and races on the outside track were abandoned.
However following a subsequent inspection of the inside track, the three straight-course races were transferred there including the feature William Hill Temple Stakes and Sandy Lane.
They passed without incident, Karl Burke and Clifford Lee completing a significant double through Venetian Sun and Night Raider.
"A very challenging situation."
— Racing TV (@RacingTV) May 23, 2026
After today's card at Haydock, @Dan_WCooper speaks at length and in full transparency to @TomBull4 pic.twitter.com/49cmjdjIws
With the venue due to race again on Friday and Saturday, the latter card again forming a key part of ITV's Saturday coverage, a plan is now being established.
Speaking to Racing TV on Saturday evening Clerk of the Course Dan Cooper said: "We are working on a plan, that’s this evening's plan, and we’ll make a plan for all scenarios.
"We’ll obviously need to investigate what has happened and we’ll do that with independent experts. We’ve got drainage contractors, independent agronomists, and there’s also things likes the sports turf research institute. There’s plenty of avenues we now need to go through.
"I need to enact that and get that going. I would foresee, without getting there at the moment, we’d have an inspection of the track, probably in the middle of the week, to see what the plan is.
"Do I know any more at this stage? I don’t. We’ve just finished the last race. We’ll announce a plan because currently there’s a going report for the outer course at Haydock which is currently unraceable so I do need to update and will do so."
And Cooper explained too what happens now for racegoers at the track on Saturday.
"We are offering racegoers a complimentary ticket, we are going to get in touch with all the owners and stable staff. The trainers have obviously been fully briefed. I’ve had a good chat with Clive Cox who helped with the inspection, I’m going to ring John Gosden now after making sure the horse is OK.
"The public here had a big screen announcement, there was text on there to say there was a delay because of what had happened in the first race and they seemed very patient.
"They were then updated on when racing would resume and now at the end of racing they’ve been updated that they will hear from us with the offer to come back here on another day."
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