British Horseracing Authority abandons four meetings amid extreme heat warning

The British Horseracing Authority has pulled four Wednesday fixtures from the calendar as a red extreme heat warning tightens its grip on central and southern Britain, forcing immediate changes to race placement, travel plans and entry deadlines. Kempton Park, Salisbury, Worcester and Ffos Las are all affected, and the disruption now reaches well beyond one afternoon’s racing.

Three of the courses sit inside the Met Office red zone, while Ffos Las is outside it but would still require horses to travel through the high-risk area to reach the track. Under the BHA’s hot weather policy, any fixture inside a red warning zone must be abandoned, a rule built to reduce heat stress and keep horses cool, comfortable and hydrated when temperatures rise to dangerous levels.

The Met Office warning runs from 9am on Wednesday 24 June to 9pm on Thursday 25 June, with the hottest locations forecast to reach around 38C and locally higher values possible. The forecaster also said June’s all-time daily temperature record was likely to be broken, a marker that explains why racing officials moved quickly rather than wait for conditions to worsen.

The knock-on effect is immediate for trainers and owners trying to map the next week of entries and transport. Ffos Las has been rescheduled for Monday 29 June, Kempton Park for Monday evening 29 June and Salisbury for Tuesday 30 June, with race programmes and prize money unchanged. Entries for the Ffos Las and Kempton Park cards close at midday on Tuesday 23 June, while Salisbury entries close at midday on Wednesday 24 June, leaving little room for hesitation as yards decide whether to target the revised dates or divert horses elsewhere.

Worcester’s National Hunt fixture had already been brought forward into the morning on Sunday in anticipation of the heat before it too was abandoned, underlining how quickly the weather has forced racing into real time triage. The BHA is also liaising with other racecourses in amber warning zones this week to consider further mitigations, including the kind of early starts already being used at some meetings.

This is only the second red extreme heat warning in British history, after July 2022, when the UK issued its first red warning for exceptional heat and later recorded 40.3C at Coningsby, Lincolnshire on 19 July 2022. The UK Health Security Agency’s red alerts for East of England, East Midlands, London, South East, South West and West Midlands, in place from 1am on Wednesday 24 June until 11pm on Thursday 25 June, show why racing has been forced to treat horse and rider welfare as the overriding priority.