Walkover woe for Leicester as £15,000 race is gifted to Greatrex's Bailarico

Officials at Leicester were coming to terms with another blow on Friday after just one runner was declared for the most valuable race at Sunday's fixture.

The track, which lost its opening jumps meeting of the season on November 19, was forced to switch to an all-hurdles card for Sunday due to prevailing hard ground on the chase course and although the £15,000 novice hurdle initially attracted 20 entries, only the Warren Greatrex-trained Bailarico stood his ground.

The five-year-old will earn £9,747 for his pains, making the race the 50th most valuable novice hurdle run in Britain in the past 12 months.

It resulted in the first declaration-stage walkover in seven years, the last of which coincidentally came at Leicester when Saint Helena was gifted a race in April 2011.

Clerk of the course Jimmy Stevenson said the unfortunate situation was "100 per cent due to the lack of rain" with the going on Friday described as good to soft, good in places in the home straight, with the rest of the course good to firm, firm in places.

Course officials are not licensed to water from November through to April but the hurdles track is on the Flat course, which has been irrigated through the summer.

"It's disappointing but we're in a difficult position as until we get some proper rain nothing is really moving," said Stevenson. "We're still missing just under a third of our rainfall for the whole year and we've only got a month left."

One person not complaining is Greatrex, who said: "I'm chuffed to bits and as long as Gavin [Sheehan] doesn't fall off him on the way down to the first hurdle, I'll have trained a winner. Bailarico is a Flat horse who has won his last five on the Flat and the ground was never an issue.

"The weather has been freakish, it's not necessarily the ground now that is the problem, it's how inconsistent it has been. I feel sorry for Leicester because it puts on great prize-money – well, not that sorry as I'm getting a winner out of it – but it's no one's fault."

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