A track inspection of Sandown on Friday will determine whether Sunday's three feature jumps races will be held on the steeplechase track or shifted onto the course proper.Racing Victoria Limited (RVL) stewards inspected the track on Thursday morning ahead of the Grand National meeting and established that the steeple track at the back of the course was unsuitable for racing following extensive rain.Should the condition of the steeple track not improve, the three programmed jumps races will be he

A track inspection of Sandown on Friday will determine whether Sunday's three feature jumps races will be held on the steeplechase track or shifted onto the course proper.

Racing Victoria Limited (RVL) stewards inspected the track on Thursday morning ahead of the Grand National meeting and established that the steeple track at the back of the course was unsuitable for racing following extensive rain.

Should the condition of the steeple track not improve, the three programmed jumps races will be held on the Hillside track course proper at Sandown which was on Thursday rated a heavy (10) and deemed to be safe for racing by stewards.

In anticipation of the likely conduct of these races on the Hillside track, the jumps races have been programmed as races one, two and three instead of races three, four and five as originally planned.

The programming change has been made due to time constraints which impact on the erection of the jumps obstacles in between flat races.

"The use of the steeple track allows a majority of the obstacles in all three races to be erected prior to the meeting, thus requiring only minimal assembly of the course proper obstacles between races," RVL operations manager Paul Bloodworth said.

"If the races are run on the course proper the entire course would need to be assembled between races which could take as much as 90 minutes to complete.

"This is not practical and therefore the races have been programmed as races one, two and three to enable the obstacles to be erected prior to the commencement of the meeting."

Meanwhile, classy jumper Some Are Bent underwent a veterinary examination after he worked at Caulfield on Thursday morning and was passed fit to run in Sunday's JJ Houlahan Hurdle (3400m).

Trainer Robert Smerdon had told stewards the nine-year-old had been found to be suffering from a foot abscess, from which he had recovered, since his last start when eased out of the Kevin Lafferty Hurdle (4150m) near the 600m by his rider Brad McLean at Warrnambool on August 1.

Some Are Bent faces seven rivals in the Houlahan while there are seven runners, headed by last year's winner Desert Master, in the Grand National Hurdle (4530m) and a field of eight, headed by Tarawera, in the Grand National Steeplechase (4530m).