Watering set to take place at Aintree in time for Grand National meeting
It is believed that watering may take place at Aintree Racecourse later this week in order to help achieve the desired good to soft conditions ahead of the 2021 Grand National meeting which is due to get underway on Thursday 8th April. Some welcome rain on Sunday means that as things stand the going on the Grand National and Mildmay courses is generally good to soft.
Overnight temperatures look set to drop close to zero at the beginning of next week, however they will rise to around 10C during the day. The longer range forecast predicts that it will stay dry for the duration of the three-day Grand National meeting.
Sulekha Varma, clerk of the course said on Monday: “We had 8mm of rain yesterday, which was a huge help after a dry period, and that has put us back to good to soft, good in places.
“We’ve got a couple of warm days coming with plenty of sunshine and it’s very breezy today, so that moisture is going to disappear fairly quickly.
“We’re of the view we’ll probably be irrigating by the middle of this week just to keep things on the right side. We’ll keep an eye on things with a view to next week when we have the usual aim of starting the meeting on good to soft.”
The last racing fixture held at Aintree took place nearly four months ago in early December and the clerk added: “We’ve had a dry spell after a very wet winter and the cold snap in February, which knocked everything back a bit, but the grass is coming on really nicely now with the sunshine. We’re in a good place at the moment.”
For the Grand National meeting, it is hoped that there will be up to six owners per horse allowed and this would be a massive increase on the standard two for each runner.
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