Ludlow cancels third meeting since summer drought
· Yahoo Sports
Ludlow has been forced to cancel a third successive jumps meeting in the 2026-27 season because of the hard ground conditions caused by the summer drought.
Grass has died in certain key areas of the course and managing director Simon Sherwood admits that they "are in the lap of the Gods" as to exactly how long the re-seeding process will take as it will need not only rain, but sun too.
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As one of the best naturally draining racecourses in the country, which normally loses very few meetings during the harsher winter months, it had already been anticipated that Ludlow might not start the season on time.
And the first scheduled meeting on 15 October was switched instead to Worcester, 35 miles away.
Ludlow also lost the racing scheduled for last week, and has now cancelled the Farmers meeting on 5 November.
Their next meeting is now planned for Monday, 23 November.
One of the Shropshire track's alternative summer uses is as a weekend Caravan Club site [Ged Scott - BBC Sport]"We're on very much a gravel base at Ludlow Racecourse," Sherwood told BBC Radio Shropshire.
"It's a fantastic racecourse when we have a wet winter. People love sending their horses to us as the ground never gets too deep for the horses.
"But it can be a bit of a nightmare when we have the other extreme, which obviously we did this summer - the worst since I've been here."
Former national hunt racing jockey Sherwood, who rode Desert Orchid to victory in the 1989 Cheltenham Gold Cup, took over as clerk of the course from long-serving Grand National winner Bob Davies in 2019.
He said this summer - the driest since 1976 - had been hard to handle.
"We had no rain at all in July and the average temperature every day was 31 degrees.
"The grass effectively goes to sleep. It went yellow. It goes into a dormant state to survive. Just as it does in people's back gardens at home."
Simon Sherwood rode one of British horseracing's most famous horses, Desert Orchard, winning the Cheltenham Gold Cup in 1989 [Shutterstock]He continued: "We don't have the water to keep watering as we have to pull it out of the River Corve to supplement what we can get from the reservoir and, at that time of year, there are restrictions. We had to sit and suffer until the rain came again.
"It was not until about September time that the grass started to wake up again. But it became very evident that, in certain parts of the track, some of the grass had actually died - and it became clear that we had an issue with regrowth. And that we needed to reseed."
Some of the worst affected areas were on crucial parts of the track, like bends and fences.
"Ludlow is quite famous for its tight corners. And we need to guarantee for the jockeys that the grassroots have knitted properly and that there is going to be no risk of slippage," Sherwood added.
"We've had agronomists on the track since August advising us on what we can and can't do.
"Things are slightly out of our control as the grass starts to thicken out.
"It has been unseasonally warm of late, we are watering and we have got same moisture but it's in the lap of the Gods."