RACING:HOPES ARE high at Gowran Park that the prestigious Red Mills Thyestes Chase programme will finally go ahead this Friday, eight days after scheduled, writes Brian O'Connor.
Frost claimed the meeting last Thursday and when it was postponed to 48 hours later. This week’s weather is also set to get cold, but the course authorities don’t believe it will interfere with their action.
“It is supposed to get down to minus two on Thursday night but daytime temperatures this week are up to seven or eight degrees so we should be fine,” Gowran manager Margaret Fogarty said yesterday.
“That is what they are telling us at the moment and that kind of overnight temperature on Thursday wouldn’t concern us.”
The €90,000 Thyestes is the meeting’s centrepiece, but the Grade Two Galmoy Hurdle is also a target for stars such as the Grade One winner Oscar Dan Dan, whose first preference is to stay local rather than travel to Cheltenham on Saturday for the Cleeve Hurdle.
“He’ll go there if Gowran isn’t on,” trainer Tom Mullins said. “The Galmoy has been switched to Friday and the Cleeve’s on Saturday, so we’ll just see the way the weather is.
“We’ve just put him in the Cleeve as another option. I’m keen to get another run into him. The better ground might entice us over to England,” he added. “As it stands at the moment he’ll go for the Galmoy, but if the weather got worse we might go over to England.”
