Thick and wet - the fog, that is, not me (I hope)

One runner last week (or that was the plan anyway) but it turned out to be a non-event.  We headed off down to Chelmsford on Friday evening with Solitary Sister (seen in the first photograph on Thursday morning), leaving Newmarket on a beautiful, warm, sunny afternoon - and arriving at Chelmsford in thick, chilly fog shortly after dusk.  It was rather disconcerting, driving along the road beside the course and not being able to see most of the floodlights because of the density of the fog.  I walked over to the enclosures between the first two races, and one could barely see for a furlong.

When I got back to the stables after the second race,  I walked into the canteen alongside one of the stalls handlers, who was coming in to get some provisions for the team between races.  He advised me that all the jockeys who had ridden in the previous race had said that the visibility was dangerously limited, and that he suspected that no more races would be run.  While the fog hadn't seemed so thick as to suggest that this would definitely be the case, I wasn't totally surprised.  Anyway, there was only one sensible response in these circumstances at a racecourse where one gets a free dinner in the canteen: "Well, I had better get my dinner order in quickly, then!"

I needn't, of course, have been so hasty.  My fish and chips were very good, but they would have been equally good a while later because, typically, the canteen staff were in no hurry to shut up shop.  There are some courses where the shutters would come down in the canteen shortly after an announcement of an abandonment, but Chelmsford fully deserves its place among the elite in the recent NARS racecourse survey, and there was no rush required to get fed.  And then we came home.

It was unfortunate, but no lives were lost.  It would have been a close call, but one can't quibble with the jockeys' verdict on this occasion.  The jockeys in the second race had, apparently, all felt that visibility was too poor for racing to continue safely, and I'd be happy to take their word for it.  The jockeys who ride regularly during the winter are fully accustomed to riding in unpleasant conditions, and they wouldn't be ones to look for excuses not to ride.  If people such as Adam Kirby and John Egan, both of whom are complete professionals and utterly fearless, say that we shouldn't be racing, that's good enough for me.