Seven extra jumps cards scheduled for February and March

Seven additional jumps meetings will be staged in February and March after the weather caused a raft of abandonments in January.

A total of 30 fixtures have been lost during spells of cold and then wet weather, and the British Horseracing Authority are eager to compensate for those losses.

They have pencilled in extra meetings on February 6, 13, 15, 20 and 27 as well as March 1 and 8.

The venues for the first three fixtures will be announced on Friday, with the extra fixtures confirmed in mid-February.

Stuart Middleton, the BHA's racing manager, said: "We are extremely grateful to the Horserace Betting Levy Board for supporting these extra fixtures, particularly as the Fridays will be fourth fixtures and therefore surplus to the Levy Criteria.

"The programmes for these fixtures will be aimed primarily at novice and bumper horses as we have somewhat of a backlog of young horses trying to get on to the track.

"It also becomes extremely important at this time of year for those trainers worrying about getting three runs into a novice horse so that it can be qualified for the Cheltenham handicaps by the qualification date of February 22.

"This is because all of the Cheltenham Festival handicaps are Class 1 or Class 2 and horses need to have run at least three times before they can run in such races."