With Champions Day at Ascot just around the corner and a great day of Group 1 action to round off the flat season there has been bad news for racing fans with the ground looking to be going towards the soft or maybe heavy side with a huge down pour of rain.
With just five days to go until the richest spectacle in the history of British racing, which will show off most of the best horses throughout the season in the four Group 1 events on the Saturday.
However, today it was announced the course was heavy in paces due to 40mm of rain falling in the last 24 hours which has seen the nearby Windsor have to cancel there meeting today.
With this unexpected quota for the ground it could see some of the horses that are scheduled to be running taken out, and not to be seen again until next summer.
Clerk of the course Chris Stickles isn't panicking yet though as he expects a dry week could resolve the conditions and see the track dry out slightly in preparation for the card that see's prize money in excess of £4.3 million.
(Credit At The Races) The Clerk Said: "There’s only a couple of millimetres forecast for the rest of the week after today – there’s a chance we could get a little bit more today.
“There’s a chance of two millimetres on Wednesday. But other than that it looks dry, so my prediction is soft ground on Saturday.
“It’s a mixture of soft and heavy at the moment – it’s heavy, soft in places on the round course and soft, heavy in places on the straight.
“I’d expect to see an improvement, given the forecast, but you don’t get much drying at this time of year.
“We haven’t seen that volume, over 40 millimetres, for ages. We wouldn’t have had it in the whole of September, so it’s quite heavy.”