The morning after: eerie silence descends as Newmarket adapts to shutdown

Usually with ten days to go until the scheduled start of the Flat turf season, the Newmarket working grounds would be brimful of horses being prepared for the Lincoln meeting at Doncaster and beyond.

However, they were eerily quiet on Wednesday morning after Tuesday's announcement that all racing in Britain was being shut down until the end of April because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The busiest places in March are to be found at either end of the town. The most popular venues are the Across the Flat gallop close to the Rowley Mile racecourse and a turning mile facility known as Waterhall, but they were largely deserted bar Sir Michael Stoute, who needed to get a crucial bit of work into his Dubai Turf hope Mustashry.