In a media release issued on Sunday afternoon, 4Racing advise that their decision to postpone Saturday’s HSH Princess Charlene of Monaco Empress Club Stakes race meeting at Turffontein to next Saturday was not taken lightly and it certainly isn’t the norm to make such an early call.
The recent weather patterns have been anything but normal and after a period of heavy rain the previous weekend and earlier in the week, the water table remains extremely high. Even though there had been some respite from the rainy weather when the decision was taken on Friday, the weather forecast for Saturday proved accurate as the rain started at just after 10:30am and continued unabated through the day.
Over 20mm was recorded by early afternoon and the total for Saturday was just under 40mm.
See the original decision here
As advised in 4Racing’s Friday press release, the track, whilst raceable on Friday, still had plenty of moisture in it. Penetrometer readings taken at lunch-time on Friday averaged 25 and with anything from 18mm to 40mm forecast for Saturday, 4Racing took the decision to postpone the meeting in the best interests of all concerned.
4Racing’s Racing Executive, Patrick Davis, and his track team were unanimous in their assessment that the track would not handle any meaningful rain on Saturday.
Numerous calls to the SA weather service were made to confirm the various forecasts of 100% chance of significant rain on Saturday. It’s worth adding that had the forecast predicted a chance of missing the rain on Saturday, 4Racing would have delayed the decision until Saturday morning.
Further, as the forecast was for the rain to continue overnight on Saturday and into Sunday/Monday, a postponement to Sunday or even Wednesday night were ruled out.
Had 4Racing decided to proceed with the race meeting, at very best they might have got through the first couple of races before the track would have become unsafe to continue.
This would have ended up costing all stakeholders dearly financially, as well as in wasted time and effort.
4Racing will always act in the interest of the wellness and safety of all role players and now looks forward to the Gr1 HSH Princess Charlene of Monaco Empress Club Stakes raceday taking place on Saturday 23 April – when hopefully conditions will be favourable.
- Media release by 4Racing on Sunday 17 April 2022
