Cold weather bites

The week began on a cold note with scheduled jumps meetings at Plumpton and Carlisle both abandoned after failing early morning inspections.

The course at Carlisle was frozen, with the frost at Plumpton compounded by a covering of snow.

Today’s jumps meeting at Market Rasen has been abandoned due to snow following an inspection while Taunton will hold a precautionary inspection at 8am.

Ludlow’s jumps fixture tomorrow is subject to an inspection at 11am today while a partly-flooded course has resulted in the meeting at Huntingdon on Thursday being washed away.

Laura Muir will begin her Olympic countdown at the World Indoor Tour leg in Lieven tonight but the Dundee Hawkhill Harrier athlete is set to make it a one and done before focusing on her quest for glory in Tokyo.

After coming through a seven-day quarantine in France, Muir will race a high-quality 1,500 metres with training partner Jemma Reekie opting to go solo in the 800m.

Muir, fresh from warm weather training camps in South Africa and Dubai, gets a stern test with Ethiopia’s five-time world indoor champion Gudaf Tsegay lining up an assault on the world record of 3:55.17, set six years ago by compatriot Genzebe Dibaba.

But with the 27-yearold already confirming she will not chase a third successive European Indoor double in Poland next month, Reekie has signalled she will follow her training partner’s lead by also opting out of a trip to Torun in order to concentrate on chasing gold at this summer’s Games.

The 22-year-old said: “We’re thinking maybe just one indoor race at the moment. No one really knows what will happen with the whole indoor season. But everything is more focused towards outdoors.”

Keely Hodgkinson, who set a world Under-20 record of 1:59.03 last month, is among the Ayrshire ace’s rivals.

World 200m champion Dina Asher-smith has pulled out of the 60m in Lieven due to a tight quad but Andy Pozzi goes in the men’s 60m hurdles.