Horseracing: Cheltenham Festival still in the balance
Officials at Cheltenham racecourse are still waiting to hear from the British Horseracing Board whether the rescheduled National Hunt Festival will be allowed to go ahead.
The meeting, which has been rearranged for April 17, 18 and 19, was thrown into further doubt on Saturday after a new case of foot-and-mouth disease was confirmed by Britain's Ministry of Agriculture in Woolstone, a village five miles north west of the track.
MAFF officials are due to redraw the map of the infected area in Gloucestershire with Cheltenham racecourse widely expected to fall within the exclusion zone.
The BHB's current policy is that if a course lies within an infected area then that track will not be able to stage a race meeting.
The prestigious three-day fixture was rearranged after its traditional mid-March slot had to be postponed because the track could not comply with MAFF instructions regarding livestock being present on site 28 days before a race meeting.
And earlier this month the eastern boundary of an infected area was drawn up just a mile from the course.
