Newbury's stellar Betfair Hurdle card on Saturday looks more than likely to be taken out by the adverse weather in Britain and officials at the track are planning ahead by looking at rescheduling the meeting for next week.
The seven-race card is subject to an inspection at 8.30am on Friday morning to see if the track is good enough to be raced on, but with it being called this early it looks as though it my fall foul of the dreadful weather.
Contingency plans are being put in place for the meeting not to be lost all together, with next Saturday not an option at this point, but next Friday or Sunday definitely something the track officials are working on with the TV companies.
If this not available the meeting will still be hoping to go ahead in midweek, but the track and ITV would prefer it to be based around the weekend.
(Credit Racing Post) Clerk of the course Keith Ottesen said on Wednesday: "We've covered the track but it's frozen underneath. It's not unexpected as they only give a certain level of protection and it's a cumulative effect of night after night of frost.
Kalashnikov wins the @Betfair Hurdle for @almracing and gains his third victory over hurdles. #BetfairSuperSaturday pic.twitter.com/FJgByc4xV4
— Newbury Racecourse (@NewburyRacing) February 10, 2018
"It'll be cold tonight and tomorrow morning, a little less on Friday morning but then it goes down to Friday night into Saturday morning about -3C to -4C and only around 0C in the day.
"We'll inspect on Friday but we'd need the situation to improve to give us a good chance of racing on Saturday. As it stands we're beginning to struggle but we'll give it time unless there's a major change."
Although there are talks of rescheduling the clerk of the course and his staff are doing everything they can to get this weekends meeting on, but with some aspects of the job out of their hands it may prove too difficult.
On potential plans to save the meeting, Ottesen added: "We're working on plans for some point next week, if not the following weekend. We need a few things to be aligned with everybody but we're very keen to restage the whole day.
"We want to rerun Saturday's fixture at Newbury in the next few days. We can't go on a Saturday but either side of that day might be palatable for ITV. If that isn't the case we can look at a midweek fixture.
"We'll want to get it on next week, as we don't want to plan to fail."