TWO SCHEDULED FAIRYHOUSE fixtures have been moved to alternative venues due to continuing remedial work on the inside track, Horse Racing Ireland announced earlier.

The February 9 meeting will now be held at Punchestown and the card scheduled for February 22 will now be held at Navan.

All other meetings scheduled for Fairyhouse are unaffected and will proceed as planned on the main track.

Fairyhouse manager Peter Roe said: “We have been undertaking remedial work on the inside track since problems were highlighted at our meeting on November 3.

Unfortunately, the adverse weather conditions through December delayed this work and it has not healed quickly enough to host the two midweek February meetings which were both scheduled for the inside track.

With the help of consultants and ground specialists STRI, we continue to work on the problem areas and we are happy with the progress being made.

Officials at Leopardstown, meanwhile, remain optimistic that Sunday’s high-profile meeting will go ahead.

The course was inspected today with officials finding that the overnight frost that hit the track had not cleared from some sections of both the chase and hurdle courses.

However, temperatures are due to rise on both Saturday and Sunday and general manager Tom Burke is hopeful the card, featuring the BHP Insurance Irish Champion Hurdle, will beat the elements.

“I think if we get the daytime temperatures they are forecasting for Saturday and Sunday, we should be OK,” said Burke.

“We’ll just have to keep monitoring things on a daily basis. We could get some cloud cover on Friday night, which could help us as well.”