RACING: Heavy rain continues to affect the jumps programme with three of today's five scheduled cards washed out, but the meeting at Ayr looks set to survive the deluge.

Clerk of the course Chris Kennedy said: "We had four millimetres of rain overnight. Some more rain is forecast but we only had four millimetres overnight so we could take a drop more yet."

Today's other scheduled jumps fixture at Folkestone was called off on New Year's Eve.

Officials at Haydock are optimistic Saturday's meeting will go ahead as planned. However, the outlook at Newcastle is not so good and there will be an inspection tomorrow morning to determine prospects for Saturday's meeting at Gosforth Park.

Saturday's other National Hunt card at Sandown is also doubtful with an inspection planned for

3 p.m. today.

There are no reported problems for Ludlow tomorrow but there was bad news from Hexham, when tomorrow's fixture was called off due to waterlogging following an inspection yesterday morning.