12/02/11 - Newbury

[Euler]

I am struggling to remember now when racing had a normal week, must have been late October / Early November. This must be a new low for the industry.

[oddstrader]

whats even more annoying is how low t/o on the other races has been,I dont understand

[hgodden]

whats even more annoying is how low t/o on the other races has been,I dont understand

Has been poor. Maybe they're watching the manchester derby? Though having said that has been weak for months now

[jimrobo]

theres an article on the bbc website about it. People leading the horses saying they felt tingling when walked on the grass.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_s ... 395743.stm

[SilentDave]

Racing abandoned (correct decision) due to uncertainty over what caused the fatalities but surely this was the case before the first race.
Cannot believe they ran that race - reports of horses coming back with burn marks in their mouths from the bridle.
Truly appalling stuff.

[andyfuller]

reports of horses coming back with burn marks in their mouths from the bridle.
Truly appalling stuff.

Where did you see/hear that?

Would find that hard to believe as one of the key things they will have tested would have been the capillary refill time in the mouth, which I am pretty sure I saw being done so the vet would have seen anything in the mouth that wasn't correct.

Also they did say all horses came back fine from the first race I thought???

[SilentDave]

Various tweets. Also numerous stable hands reporting they were getting shocks from their horses, Nicky Henderson withdrew Kid Cassidy as something was clearly amiss so clearly all/most runners were affected.
Further details trickling through now.

[JollyGreen]

Reports on Channel 4 that horses did come back with burns in their mouth where the bit would be located.

Very strange!

[andyfuller]

Amazing that wasn't picked up down at the start - makes you wonder what vetting actually took place!

[SilentDave]

Maybe the burns would only have been visible once the tack was removed?
Apparently agricultural contractors aereated course and paddock this week. Spikes go down 18" and may have pierced an underground cable.

[Euler]

Newbury chairman Christopher Spence said: "It's a nightmare for everybody. We can't be certain what it is, we all think it's electric, but we don't know.

"It's easy to say carry on and hope for the best, but just hoping is not something we should or could do. We've got to look after our customers and we've got to look after the horses, so very regrettably we've called the meeting off.

"It's defeated everyone and we don't know the answer. We'll have a meeting to decide if we can re-run any of the races and we'll make further announcements as soon as we possibly can.

"We've looked at the cables and we couldn't see any damage and no work has been carried out on the paddock since the last meeting."

[SilentDave]

"We've looked at the cables and we couldn't see any damage"
How could they look at underground cables?

[oddstrader]

apparently the paddock and certain areas of the course where spiked during the week, i know this is common to get some air into the ground during the early part of spring etc, so possibly a shallow cable got damaged during this procedure,

[SilentDave]

So the Chairman says they haven't carried out any work since the last meeting however...

A spokeswoman for Newbury racecourse said: "The Southern Electric Board came in and did an investigation and found a cable.

"At this stage we cannot confirm if that definitely was the reason for the incident."

Newbury joint managing director Stephen Higgins said there was a "distinct possibility" that maintenance carried out before yesterday's meeting had disturbed the cable, which is believed to have been buried for at least 40 years.

"We have done some routine maintenance during the week, we do that every race meeting before racing, and whether or not that has disturbed something in the ground that had caused this catastrophic incident to occur to those horses we are not sure yet, but it is a distinct possibility."

[Zapata]

"We've looked at the cables and we couldn't see any damage"
How could they look at underground cables?

They can do a resistance test of cable insulation by momentarily passing a very high test voltage across the cable and measuring how much passes to earth.

It tells them if there is damage or a breakdown of insulation.

I think that since the resistance of the ground is pretty much zero the damaged cable may be some distance away.