THE dry weather and spring ground is playing havoc with the national hunt racing season in the run-up to Cheltenham, so how ironic that the big festival in less than two weeks’ time will be the first meeting in a while which is expected to have some long awaited and needed rain.

But for Saturday afternoon Kelso is the only race meeting in Britain likely to have the word “soft” in the going description.

So let’s start at the Borders track which has its big race day of the year, and because of the ground conditions, has been rewarded with a fair entry of 65 runners which compares very favourably with both Doncaster and Newbury.