BRITISH Horseracing Authority bosses are contingency planning with trainers and racecourses as fears grow about the impact of the summer drought on the autumn jumps fixture list.

Director of racing Richard Wayman said talks were ongoing between racing professionals about whether summer jumping courses could extend their season as traditional winter tracks in hard-hit regions struggle to provide safe ground.

“We are obviously concerned about the impact of the lack of rain over the last few months and I’d say particularly from the perspective of jump racing, which is obviously due to move up a gear in the next few weeks,” said Wayman.

“These are pretty exceptional conditions that we are looking at and we are therefore in the process of working with both trainers and racecourses to understand what we might be able to do differently in the next few weeks.

“We have had some racecourses that have been watering through the summer and racing through the summer, so we may be looking at extending their fixtures a bit later this year.

“There may be other racecourses who are unable to start when they would like to start. The answer is it’s a challenging situation, but we are going to work in a flexible and agile way to address it the best that we can over the coming weeks.”