There have been no weather-related issues at Epsom

There have been no weather-related issues leading up to Friday's Oaks event, so it looks like the Betfred Derby Festival will begin on firm to soft footing.

By Thursday afternoon, Epsom had avoided any significant precipitation, and course clerk Andrew Cooper was happy with his preparations, letting nature take its course.

Although there is a chance of light rain in the forecast for the Betfred Oaks and the Holland Cooper Coronation Cup, the outlook is promising for Derby Day racegoers.

Cooper said at around 5 pm: “We haven’t seen a lot of rain yet here today. It was a cloudy morning with a few light showers, which gave us about a millimetre, and it actually ended up being quite a pleasant, dry afternoon. I think we’ve got some showery rain heading our way this evening, there’s still some potential for that here, so watch this space on that, but I don’t expect it to be thundery heavy or anything like that. I’ve left the ground for now at good to soft, which is where we were at first thing this morning because, before this morning, we’d been dry since Tuesday afternoon. There was nothing I’d really call soft, so I think good to soft remains a fair call as it is. It will have dried a fraction during the day here but it wasn’t the kind of temperature or dry enough for it to dry very quickly. Tomorrow, there looks a lot of dry weather but we could have a kind of drizzly spell through the morning potentially. It’s not a completely dry picture but there doesn’t look anything particularly heavy – and Saturday looks dry.”