Catterick monitoring high winds for Wednesday's fixture as Storm Jocelyn hits Britain

Catterick will be monitoring the high winds brought by Storm Jocelyn for Wednesday’s jumps fixture but remains hopeful that racing will go ahead as planned.

There were strong gusts across many areas of Britain on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, peaking at 97mph in North Wales.

A Met Office yellow weather warning is in place for a spell of strong winds on Wednesday, covering Catterick in North Yorkshire, but clerk of the course Fiona Needham does not feel there is a major threat to the track’s seven-race card.

The going has eased to soft, heavy in places (from soft) following 15mm of rain in the last day.

Needham said at 7.50am: “It is windy but we’re raceable at present and the gusts are due to drop later on.

“If the winds were forecast to get much stronger it would be a bit different but they are set to drop this afternoon so I’m hopeful we’ll be okay.

“There were a few rails down on the far bend, which is exposed, when I arrived first thing and it had been very windy overnight, but we left a few of the wings down overnight as we expected that to be the case.

“It hasn’t been as bad as Storm Isha the other day, though. The going is soft, heavy in places but I imagine it will dry out a little given the winds and be predominantly soft.”

There are no issues anticipated for the other jumps fixture in Britain on Wednesday at Chepstow, where gusts are forecast to hover around the low-20mph mark and the ground has eased to soft, heavy in places (from soft, good to soft in places). 

All-weather fixtures take place at Lingfield in the afternoon and Kempton this evening, while Fairyhouse stages a jumps meeting in Ireland.

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