No luck for Newton Abbot as torrential rain forces another costly cancellation

Newton Abbot boss Pat Masterson admitted the course was “not having much luck”, after a torrential downpour on Tuesday afternoon forced the cancellation of Wednesday’s meeting, which had been due to form part of ITV Racing’s coverage.

Nearly an inch of rain fell at Newton Abbot in less than an hour on Tuesday leaving standing water and areas of unsafe ground, heaping more misfortune on the course which lost a number of fixtures last year during the coronavirus lockdown because of its primarily summer programme of jump racing.

Nevertheless, Masterson, managing director at Newton Abbot, was keen to contextualise the impact of the storms which hit parts of Britain on Tuesday. He said: “We’re not having much luck, put it that way, but it’s part of the territory and we had to abandon. You have to accept that the weather is the weather.

“As I said to my staff this morning, it puts everything into context when you see the news of that poor nine-year-old boy who was killed by lightning in Blackpool. It was strange weather across the country yesterday and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

Wednesday’s meeting at Newton Abbot had been due to form part of ITV Racing’s coverage on ITV4 prior to its cancellation, building on the course’s exposure on the channel the previous week during the Chester May meeting.

The loss of mainstream coverage was particularly frustrating for Masterson, who added: “It’s not nice to lose meetings and we’re having a tough time of it, as is everyone in racing at the moment, but we have to just get on now.

“What is disappointing is we seldom get the chance to be on ITV and you don’t know when it’ll happen again. We had them here last week and it’s really helpful in raising your profile.”

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