FFOS LAS remain hopeful that they will provide the first jumping action in a week on Saturday as the weather continued its icy grip on the sport.

With Saturday featuring the £50,000 SIS Live Welsh Champion Hurdle and the rescheduling of the Tolworth Hurdle from Sandown’s abandoned card from last weekend the Welsh venue are loath to lose the meeting to the weather.

Ffos Las is pulling out all the stops to stage and clerk of the course Tim Long said: “We had a couple of inches of snow this morning, it all came very quickly, but it is rapidly disappearing. We’ve had a good thaw and it’s got to three degrees this afternoon and there’s a lot of sunshine.

“There could be another flurry of snow through tonight, but the forecast is for it stay round about the freezing mark day and night.

“If we get this total thaw, which it looks like we are, and we have 24-36 hours to have a good window to put sheets down to cover the whole course that’s what we are going to do.

“We are giving ourselves a fair chance. Geographically if anyone is going to be racing we’ve got the best chance and the forecast does give us a squeak.”

With snow covering much of Britain all the National Hunt fixtures not already called off are expected to be up until Saturday. Even today’s all-weather meetings at Lingfield and Kempton face precautionary inspections at 6.30am and 8am respectively.