Sandown is happy with mixed Finale

Sandown today revealed plans to end the current National Hunt season with the winning formula that accident, rather than design, forced upon them last term.

A vastly improved two-day Finale meeting, mixing jumps and Flat events and culminating with the Whitbread Gold Cup, has been introduced into the Esher track's 2001-02 fixture list.

The enhanced meeting echoes last April's hugely successful mixed card, compiled at short notice to provide replacements for key championship races lost when the 2001 Cheltenham Festival was postponed and then finally abandoned due to a local outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease.

"To have staged such a well-received and successful meeting, albeit under extraordinary circumstances, and then not consider incorporating it into Sandown's programme as a feature would have been overly cautious and extremely unambitious," said Sandown's director of racing, Andrew Cooper.

"After the warm glow of last April faded, we realised we had the nugget of something really exciting. The mix of top-class National Hunt and Flat racing over the two days is uniquely charming in the British racing calendar."

Cooper admitted the previous Flat-only format for Whitbread Friday was "only for the purists". Last year's enhanced card attracted more than double the previous Friday attendance, clocking in at 8,500 rather than just 4,000 in 2000. The stands were also filled to their 18,000 capacity on 2001 Whitbread day.