King George Chase

Kempton Park officials are confident of beating cold snap for King George Chase on Boxing Day

Kempton Park’s Clerk of the course Barney Clifford is confident that the William Hill King George VI Chase festival will beat the current cold snap and go ahead as planned on Boxing Day.

The recent cold snap has already put several National Hunt fixtures on Boxing Day in doubt, with racing at Towcester already abandoned. But Kempton Park has deployed frost covers over the entirety of the track and officials are confident that the course will be ready for racing.

“If we were racing today we’d fall into the same trap as Haydock on Saturday that if we lifted the covers they would freeze behind us, so it’s a good job they are in place. Looking ahead, the temperatures are due to rise from tonight and over the next three or four days,” Clifford said.

“We’ve got some precipitation coming through – showers of rain and sleet – but temperatures are set to rise to four degrees tomorrow and five degrees Christmas Day and hopefully increasing through Boxing Day and December 27. It’s perfectly raceable under the covers, they keep the ground temperature high.

“Prior to employing the covers, we were good to soft and we’ve had 10 millimetres of precipitation but you still couldn’t call it anything other than good. It might ride a bit dead.”