Ffos Las battles against odds to beat the frost

THE chance of racing fans gleaning Cheltenham Festival clues at Ffos Las on Saturday looked as bleak as the weather forecast with the meeting odds-on to be abandoned.

Channel 4 was preparing to follow the lead of the Scoop6 and divert its attentions entirely to all-weather action from Lingfield and Wolverhampton should officials be forced to abandon the headline fixture, the highlight of which would see Oscar Whisky facing six rivals in the Welsh Champion Hurdle.

The Welsh track faces a 9am inspection on Saturday ahead of its biggest fixture of the year but on Friday evening the meeting was 1-2 to fall foul of the frost.

Temperatures of -5C on Thursday night left clerk of the course Tim Long feeling less confident of racing taking place. Lows of -2C are forecast overnight into Saturday with snow or sleet also expected.

"I'm not quite as optimistic as I was yesterday," Long said on Friday. "It's colder than it's been all week and I don't think the warmer conditions will come quickly enough.

"The forecasts look like we'll drop below freezing again tonight and it'll be slow warming up tomorrow. We're going to look at 9am and take stock."

Dan Williams of the Met Office said: "We normally expect a spell like this at some stage during the winter months and this is by no means the latest it has arrived, but it has surprised us it hasn't happened sooner.

"All the elements have finally come together and it's happened; predicting how long it'll last is tough as we can only really be accurate through to Monday.

"Much of Britain will be under a hard frost on Saturday morning with snow coming in from the west around lunchtime. With the snow moving across the country to the east, it will be followed by sleet or rain."