AN investigation was underway at Newbury on Saturday afternoon after their meeting was abandoned following an extraordinary incident before the first race when two horses died in the parade ring.
Fenix Two and Marching Song both collapsed within ten yards of each other at the western end of the paddock and speculation has mounted on the track that it may have been due to some kind of electrical incident.
The first race took place as scheduled after vets checked the remainder of the runners at the start as Kid Cassidy had seemed to wobble before leaving the paddock. He was subsequently withdrawn.
Unconfirmed reports suggest that some of the runners who took part in the race appeared to have burn marks around their mouths when their tack was removed.
Graham Thorner, co-owner of Marching Song, was in tears in the paddock and the horse's trainer Andrew Turnell said: "I was just about to leg up [jockey] Nick Scholfield when the horse veered away and collapsed. He was dead within ten seconds. There is a feeling he may have been electrocuted."
Thorner's co-owner Robert Garner said: "One of the horses had done a real strange cavorting move and then ours came round and went over and couldn't get up like a normal horse. I'm told when they went to touch him they got an electric shock and then when they went to take the head collar off they got another shock."
Kid Cassidy's trainer Nicky Henderson added: "It is impossible to know what happened. My horse did something peculiar before those two went down. He was down on the ground on his hind legs. Luckily he got back up on to the rubber.
"I went down to the start with him and then I took him out. It appears that there is a problem area in the parade ring so you can see their point as one can not risk this happening again. It was the most horrific thing I think I have seen. I have been racing for 33 years and I have never seen anything like it."
Speculation was circulating that there was an electric shock from a cable under the paddock which would affect the horses with aluminium shoes, but not humans, although this has not been confirmed.
Stipendiary steward Paul Barton said: "After those horses collapsed in the parade ring we took the decision that it was safe to continue with the rest of the meeting. After running the first race we isolated that area and some of the trainers were uncomfortable with continuing.
"We had a meeting with the racecourse executive and at that meeting, because we could not establish what the causes of death of the two horses were, the executive weren't comfortable with continuing on health and safety grounds and therefore we had no decision but to abandon.
"A post-mortem will be carried out on the two horses that sadly died in the parade ring. We are going to try and interview people connected with those horses as well as the veterinary team.
"We want to interview the lads with the horses and also some ofthe trainers and jockeys to try and establish what it is."
Barton defended the decision to run the first race. He added: "They were extremely unusual circumstances. At the time we did not know whether those horses had had a heart attack, we did not know what had happened. We had all the horses examined by the veterinary surgeons before they raced. These are highly unusual circumstances - I have never seen anything like this before.
"After the race, as we got more information obviously the decision making process changed."
Clerk of the course Richard Osgood added: "One has to be aware of the duty of care to the public, trainers, jockeys and to the equine."
Osgood said he was unaware of any electric cable under the parade ring, with the main feed coming at the other side of the racecourse, although he added there could be some old cables there he was unaware of.
Paul Nicholls said that if the racecourse could be deemed safe, he would be in favour of the meeting being rearranged for Wednesday. "The horses are ready to run and it would be great if we could get the meeting on in the next week, hopefully Wednesday. I understand why they had to call it of today - they didn't really have any alternative."
The racecourse management announced that racegoers who were at Newbury on Saturday will be given a full refund.