Racing's rulers in Britain yesterday announced an easing of foot-and-mouth restrictions designed to allow more courses to stage the sport. The British Horseracing Board is lifting its current guidelines that prevents a course staging racing if it is within 10 kilometres of an infected area.
Instead a course will be allowed to race if it is more than 3km - the figure set by MAFF - outside an infected foot-and-mouth zone. The decision to allow a course to resume racing will also be based on other criteria, including the topography of a course and its location.
The BHB is unable to reveal at this stage which of the 14 courses currently prevented from racing will be able to stage racing again under these changes. "We need to look at all the 14 courses involved and then discuss it with MAFF," said BHB communications director Teresa Cash.
"We can now get down to putting the preparation in work but we can't say courses x, y and z will be able to race. The aim is to move along quite quickly to try to get some of the courses going by the end of the month.
"It's quite a complicated subject but we should be able to make a further announcement by the end of next week or early the following week."
Some courses, however, are likely to remain closed even under the new guidelines. Carlisle, Cartmel, Chepstow and Worcester all fall within the 3km exclusion zone set by MAFF - and officials at Bangor have so far chosen not to race even though they are outside the BHB's 10km exclusion zone.
The changes could benefit Uttoxeter and Newcastle which are respectively 3.2km and 4km away from the nearest infected farm. Both courses are owned by Stan Clarke's Northern Racing Group which has been especially hard-hit by the foot and mouth restrictions.
"It's great news for the industry and as far as we are concerned," said Northern Racing's David McAllister. The group's other courses are Hereford, and the Flat-only tracks Bath and Brighton. Clarke also has a substantial interest in Chepstow.
"Northern Racing has not been able to stage a meeting since Uttoxeter on February 24th and Chepstow has also been lost," said McAllister.
"But at last things are looking up. We'll be back with Brighton tomorrow and then Hereford, which was waterlogged last time, should be on Easter Monday."
Heavy rain at Newmarket in recent weeks has forced Tattersalls to make changes to the schedule for next week's Breeze-Up Sale. The breeze, due to take place at 9.30 a.m. on Tuesday, will not now go ahead in order to preserve the ground for the principal breezes on Wednesday and Thursday.
