AS if British racing didn’t have enough problems, the weather played havoc last week with faster ground causing more non-runners and then deluges of rain causing Market Rasen to be abandoned on Thursday.

And the low sun appeared again to cause much annoyance at Cheltenham last Sunday. And it’s becoming more common to have fences and hurdles bypassed in Irish racing, either due to the low sun dazzle or by causing shadows in front of obstacles.

Of course the answer to the often posed question that the how come there were no obstacles omitted due to the same sunshine 20 years ago, is that there was no health and safety taken into account 20 years ago – horse and rider went out and either jumped or fell.

There are many examples, the most serious being Annie Power overjumping at a shadow in her Mares’ Hurdle last-flight fall.

The last hurdle and fence was omitted at Leopardstown last Christmas (December 29th) and you only have to look back at the Grade 3 Mares’ Hurdle where Shewearsitwell made a bad mistake at what would be the final hurdle and took a terrible fall at the next after taking off before a shadow. But then the rest of the field negotiated both obstacles.

There is no doubt that the few times the TV cameras show the low sun glare head-on, it didn’t look safe to ride flat out to the last into the dazzle but we have very few images to judge how bad it actually is.

With so many jockey cameras now used in races, perhaps someone in the production studio could show us that view of a rider riding into the sun so we can better gauge how difficult it is.

Marmo@marmobet

I hate hurdles and fences being omitted due to low sun but to be fair I walked from the Guinness village up the betting ring after the Greatwood & I wouldn’t have like to be riding a horse into the sun, you could see nothing.