The ongoing rain across many parts of South Africa is disrupting the racing programme and Phumelela and Gold Circle have advised that they wish to minimise the risk of losing more meetings to the weather.
Consequently, the race meeting at Clairwood tomorrow Friday 7 March (originally a Greyville night meeting) has been moved to Saturday. The weather forecast for Durban is improving and the one-day postponement will give the fixture a better chance of taking place.
As things stand now there will be three South African meetings on Saturday afternoon – Clairwood, Durbanville and Turffontein – but there’s a strong possibility that the Turffontein fixture may have to be postponed.
“We have had 110mm of rain in the last three days at Turffontein and the track is very wet,” said Phumelela horseracing executive Patrick Davis.
“Whether Saturday’s meeting will be able to go ahead is dependent on the weather, but the forecast is not promising. If need be we will move the meeting to Sunday and then to next Wednesday night if it’s not possible to race on Sunday. There are six feature races on the card and are all feeder races to SA Classic Day, so they must be run and as soon as possible.”
A decision whether to go ahead with racing at Turffontein as planned on Saturday will only be made on the morning of the meeting, unless it is obvious by Friday afternoon that the track is too wet.
“Consequently we are not announcing revised times for Saturday’s Clairwood meeting as yet, but instead waiting until we know if there will be racing at Turffontein on Saturday,” Davis said.
