Wet day dents prospects of Sandown staging Imperial Cup meeting on Saturday

Sandown's Imperial Cup card on Saturday is in jeopardy following a wet Thursday, with the course receiving far more rainfall than anticipated.

On Thursday morning the decision was taken to cancel Friday's card due to waterlogging, but clerk of the course Andrew Cooper was at that stage hopeful the forecast could aid the chances of Saturday's meeting surviving.

However, the situation had worsened by Thursday afternoon, with a noon inspection on Friday scheduled for Saturday's meeting.

Cooper said: "We're having a much wetter day than we were generally led to believe by the majority of forecasts we were looking at. We are up to 12 millimetres of rain and it is still raining. I think we are going to get another couple of hours [of rain] before it moves away.

"I had a walk round and it has definitely put us back considerably in terms of the ground and prospects. Whereas the last few days we were concentrating on a couple of furlongs, with this level of rain the issues are now more widespread."

Sandown Saturday card

Friday's card was due to feature the Grand Military Gold Cup for military amateur riders, and the race has been rescheduled for Saturday's card, should it be on.

Ffos Las will be the only jumps card in Britain and Ireland on Friday as Leicester's meeting was also lost on Thursday to waterlogging.

Jump racing prospects

Friday
Sandown CANCELLED
Leicester CANCELLED
Ffos Las Heavy

Saturday
Sandown Soft, heavy in places (chase) and heavy (hurdle), inspection noon on Friday
Ayr Heavy, soft in places
Hereford Soft, heavy in places
Gowran Heavy

Sunday
Southwell Soft, heavy in places
Warwick Soft (chase) and soft, heavy in places (hurdle)
Naas Soft (chase) and soft, yielding in places (hurdle)

Monday
Plumpton Heavy
Stratford Heavy, soft in places (chase) and soft, heavy in places (hurdle), waterlogged in areas but optimistic racing will go ahead
Taunton Heavy, waterlogged in places

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