Richard Lee, a trainer since 1986, has 30 horses in his yard at The Bell House

North Herefordshire racing trainer Richard Lee says the dry autumn is threatening to impact on his plans for the coming winter months.

The continual firm ground means that Lee has not yet dared to put some of his horses through their paces.

"We can school the hurdlers in our sand school and we have got some baby hurdles," he said.

"The novice chasers are our problem as we daren't school over fences at the moment as the ground is just too firm."

Lee says the lack of rain has been highly frustrating for trainers across the land - and a mere glance across the racing press each morning serves to underline the problems facing the industry.

It has been a very funny season because we had such a wet June and July when all of our winter horses were out in the field getting wet and miserable Herefordshire trainer Richard Lee

"Obviously we are not the only ones with this problem," he told BBC Hereford and Worcester. "You only have to look at the chase fields at the moment.

"The novice chases are very skinny, with only four or five runners and those would be horses that go on the firm.

"It will rain as it always has done but I am not prepared to risk my nice young horses."

There is a concern that when the weather does break there will be a mad rush from trainers keen to give their horses valuable race experience. But Lee says that the only certainty is that there will be too many horses vying for places in too few races.

"We will all get balloted out all over the place," he laughed. "But that is the way of the world.

"It has been a very funny season because we had such a wet June and July when all of our winter horses were out in the field getting wet and miserable.

"Meanwhile, all our firm-ground horses were struggling trying to race in the mud so the whole thing was backwards - but we can't organise the weather."

Given the dry spell of weather there must have been a temptation to train horses on ground not ideal for them but Lee has been in the sport too long to risk this.

"Heathcliffe is probably one of our most highly-rated novices who will be going over fences this time," he said.

"He is rated 133 and is a horse I think a lot of.

"I can't see any point in schooling him on firm ground and injuring him as then we would have nothing for the rest of the season."

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