THE grim scene in racing this winter took a turn for the better when this afternoon's Catterick race meeting was given the go-ahead this morning.

Overnight rain had helped to remove the firmness from the ground to allow the meeting to beat the freeze currently gripping the nation's programme.

Said Catterick racecourse spokesman John Gundill: "What has saved us is that rain that has taken the crustiness out of the ground."

The going at the North Yorkshire track was described as 'good to soft'.

However, today's other meetings at Stratford and Lingfield both fell victim to the icy blasts.

There were frozen lumps on the track at Lingfield, while Stratford's clerk of the course Stephen Lambert said: "It was very close to call, too close for comfort, but it was too risky.

"About 90 percent of the course is raceable, but that means that ten percent isn't."

The temperature dipped to minus two and a half degrees centigrade overnight.

Catterick and Wetherby of the three National Hunt racecourses in Yorkshire have already suffered fixture casualties to the weather this winter. Doncaster have managed to race on the two days they were due to have a programme.

In the whole of last year Yorkshire lost 18 days of racing to bad weather, compared with only seven days lost in 1999. Most of last year's losses were in the spring, autumn and December.

Nationally 91 meetings were lost last year, over a third of those in December. And already this year the casualty figures have mounted.

"It is difficult to quantify the affect in financial terms because there are so many factors involved," said Graham Orange, chief of the Go Racing in Yorkshire organisation ,which handles much of the marketing for Yorkshire's racecourses.

"Racecourses are insured for losing fixtures to the weather but it is difficult to say what affect abandoned meetings have on the loyalty of the racegoing public. Most people understand that no one has any control over the weather.

Wetherby has lost three days of racing this winter, one of those being an extra fixture the course was allocated by the British Horseracing

However, Wetherby have just been given another additional fixture for Saturday, February 17. Being given a Saturday as an additional fixture is unusual and it should improve the chances of the programme attracting a bigger crowd than would perhaps be the case with a midweek fixture.

Catterick suffered a big double blow over the New Year when two days of racing were lost, one of Saturday, December 30 and the other on New Year's Day. There is an additional day's racing scheduled for Catterick next Thursday (January 25).

Updated: 10:48 Saturday, January 20, 2001