Kempton team prepared for solar eclipse

While the twilight meeting at Ffos Las will begin and end earlier than originally scheduled to ensure all six races take place in daylight, there are no such issues at Kempton due to the floodlights that are in place at the Sunbury circuit.

Wednesday’s event will be the first partial solar eclipse for 27 years and will be visible across Europe, with some places experiencing a total eclipse, where the sun, moon and earth all line up in space.

The light will dim, the temperature will drop and the wind may change direction as the sun disappears behind the moon.

After a few minutes the sun will reappear and daylight will return. The eclipse is expected to occur between 7.02pm and 7.16pm and Kempton has races scheduled to take place at 7pm and 7.30pm.

Kempton’s clerk of the course Barney Clifford said: “The last one was nearly 30 years ago so I wasn’t quite at Kempton then. I remember it but there were no floodlights in those days!

“I’m going to put the floodlights on early doors. I know they have predicted a time for it but you don’t quite know how much of the sun is going to be covered and for what race so we’ll have the lights on plenty early enough.”

While Ffos Las has the aptly-named Dark Sun running on its card, perhaps those punters looking for a clue in a name at Kempton could do worse than Sweltering because as well as an eclipse, like most courses Clifford is also having to deal with extreme temperatures.

“I hadn’t noticed there was a Dark Sun running, you couldn’t make it up could you,” said Clifford.

“We’ve got a nice breeze today, it’s 30C, forecast 32C on Wednesday and hotter again on Thursday. We’ll have all the necessary watering facilities available and I might make the call for them to go straight to post from the pre-parade ring, but I’ll decide that on the day.

“When they are walking on rubber bricks it can get extremely hot but we have a nice cooling breeze today.”

Ironically one of the best places to view the eclipse is Palma in Majorca, from where Clifford has just returned from holiday.

He said: “I’ve just got back from Palma where they are actually going to close the motorways because they are expecting everyone to try and get a view of it from the west of the island and they think it will be gridlocked.”