York are still hoping to stage their final meeting of the season tomorrow despite having to abandon yesterday's racing on the Knavesmire. The afternoon's fixture was lost when an early-morning inspection found that heavy rain had made the track unfit for racing.

But office manager Phillip Smedley said: "We are still hopeful for Saturday. We will need to see what the weather does, but it is only drizzling now and it could `fair up' by this afternoon."

Smedley reckoned that York's meeting on Wednesday had contributed to the abandonment. "We had two-thirds of an inch of rain overnight - of which half an inch came in the last two or three hours - and it came on ground which had been pounded into yesterday," he said.