SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
It’s looking increasingly likely that the previously rearranged Coral Welsh Grand National will be staged at Chepstow on Saturday, so long as the rainfall that originally scuppered the race from taking place isn’t replicated this week.
The only other time that the Welsh National was moved to a Saturday was in 2015, a postponement that subsequently led to a dramatic increase in turnover for the race.
Clerk of the course Keith Ottesen said: “The course is looking all right today. The forecast for the next couple of days isn’t bad at all. There is some rain around on Thursday and potentially Friday. As long as it isn’t anywhere near what we had last week you would have to be very hopeful.
“Boxing Day through to the morning of December 27 we got 40mm of rain in one episode and on Christmas Day we had 20mm so we had 60mm in two days leading up to the race. We would have raced on Boxing Day because the course took 20mm very well. It was an incredible amount of rain.
“The track is fine now. It’s not that we have been without rain in the last few days but it’s not been in the quantity we had early last week.
“The track is taking it, as long as we get some breaks. We will keep an eye on the weather as the week goes on but at the moment we are positive.”
Coral PR director, Simon Clare added: “When the 2015 Welsh Grand National was moved to the first Saturday in January it proved to be the 14th biggest betting race of 2016, with the 2016 renewal of the race in December of that year being the 23rd biggest betting race of the year.”
