Newbury card abandoned

Racing at Newbury was abandoned in tragic circumstances after Fenix Two and Marching Song collapsed and died in the parade ring.

Tragic deaths before first race

Racing at Newbury was abandoned in extraordinary circumstances after Fenix Two and Marching Song collapsed and died in the parade ring before the first race. An inquiry and immediate post-mortems were announced, with the reasons for the deaths unknown amid speculation the horses died from some form of electric shock emanating from underneath the paddock. Some horses had already made it down to the start and there were reports that others had "wobbled" on entering the paddock. Despite running the first race, a decision was taking to call the rest of the big meeting off. A statement released at 2.10pm read: "The Newbury executive have decided that racing today has been abandoned." Newbury chairman Christopher Spence said: "It's a nightmare for everybody. We can't be certain what it is, we all think it's electric, but we don't know. "It's easy to say carry on and hope for the best, but just hoping is not something we should or could do. "We've got to look after our customers and we've got to look after the horses, so very regrettably we've called the meeting off. "It's defeated everyone and we don't know the answer. We'll have a meeting to decide if we can re-run any of the races and we'll make further announcements as soon as we possibly can. "We've looked at the cables and we couldn't see any damage and no work has been carried out on the paddock since the last meeting."