Cheltenham to cover up before Saturday's card

CHELTENHAM'S clerk of the course Simon Claisse said on Friday he is not anticipating any problems for Saturday's festival trials day despite deploying frost covers on the course.

Snow fell for an hour in Cheltenham last night but Claisse said at 7.45am on Friday that most of it had cleared and that his groundstaff would have no problem in putting the frost covers down.

"Most of the snow has gone now," said Claisse. "We are still planning to put the frost covers down later this morning and the snow should have completely cleared in a hour.

"We might have a frost tonight when temperatures are forecast to drop to -1C but with the covers on we aren't anticipating any problems."

The going at Cheltenham is now good to soft all over following 6mm of overnight rain.