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Epsom Downs will receive more water on Wednesday morning, the racecourse announced on Tuesday. Epsom Downs Clerk of the Course and Head of Racing Andrew Cooper issued a going update on Tuesday evening in advance of the June 4-5 Cazoo Derby Festival.

“We've maintained a going report here of Good, Good To Firm in places and we produced a Turftrax GoingStick reading of 7.1, which is actually what it was on Sunday morning,” said Cooper in a statement.

“It had increased to 7.4 yesterday morning and the watering that we've done has improved matters a touch and brought us back to a stage where we were two days ago–which is historically pretty much good ground. However there is definitely ground that's on the quicker side on bits of the course though, hence that going description.

“We've had another hot day and it looks a hotter day still tomorrow, with talks of 26 or 27 degrees in the South East. Epsom is often a degree or so lower than the maximum because we're quite elevated here and often have a bit of a breeze so it would often be hotter at Sandown than here in terms of actual temperature.

“The plan here and now is to embark on a watering programme again tomorrow but quite exactly how much we'll leave until the morning. We'll take stock of the forecasts but I'm sure we'll be doing something quite widespread because we know we'll lose 3mm of moisture of soil here on a day like today.

“I'd say that we are now where we want to be in terms of a broad aim for Friday–as opposed to anything any slower or anything any quicker. That's quite a good ground condition to go into a two-day meeting on, which means you can probably let nature take its course thereafter and be no worse than Good To Firm on Saturday.

“You'd have called us Soft on Monday of last week but by Friday you wouldn't have called it any slower than Good To Soft. All courses up and down the country are drying out at the moment but Epsom Downs being chalk-based is rather free draining and it can turn very quickly.”

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Irrigation has started on select portions of the Epsom Downs in advance of the Cazoo Derby Festival on June 4-5. The ground is currently good, good to firm in places, and the forecast is looking less and less likely for rain.

“At nine o'clock yesterday morning I'd have called the ground good,” said Epsom Clerk of the Course Andrew Cooper. “Yesterday was a dry, sunny day here. Temperatures got up to about 20 degrees–and it was a lovely, sunny afternoon.

“We dried out a bit more–and as of nine o'clock this morning, if we were racing here today I'd call it good, good to firm in places.

“You've only got to look at the going reports up and down the country and see that a lot of the Flat courses are heading into that territory, so that's not unexpected at all. It's exactly where I'd have expected us to be, given the weather in the last week.”

The drier portions of the course will have five millimetres of water applied, but more may be needed depending on the weather later in the week.

“We're focusing today on those bits of the track that we would be calling good to firm, or the fast side of good, if we were racing here today,” he said. “As far as the Derby course is concerned, it's really only the first half a mile, from the Derby start to the mile start that walks a bit quicker than the last mile.

“We'll be leaving the last mile, certainly for today, and we've decided we'll put 5mm over that first half a mile. In our judgement, the time has come for us to step in and just start irrigation.

“In terms of the forecast, increasingly–this morning even–the shower risk at the end of the week is diminishing.

“There's still a degree of uncertainty. But here and now, the risk of showers is diminishing–which is one of the considerations to us cracking on and doing some watering.”

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