York hope to finish

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.