British racing faces a blank seven days following yesterday's decision to suspend the sport in response to the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease.

Yesterday's three meetings at Catterick, Leicester and Wolverhampton were the last until Wednesday March 7th, when the racing authorities hope action can resume.

The week-long hiatus gives hope that the three-day Cheltenham Festival, due to start in a fortnight's time, could still go ahead.

However, if the Festival does take place, it may have to proceed without the traditional Irish invasion as the Minister for Agriculture Joe Walsh, speaking in Brussels yesterday, announced the suspension of all horse and greyhound meetings with effect from midnight last night to prevent the spread of the disease.

He also appealed to the Irish public not to travel to the Cheltenham Festival, stressing that people should only travel to Britain if their journey was really necessary.

Yesterday's joint statement from the British Horseracing Board and Jockey Club said: "In view of the continuing spread of foot-and-mouth disease, the directors of the BHB, in conjunction with the stewards of the Jockey Club, have temporarily suspended racing with effect from tomorrow.

"Racing will resume on Wednesday March 7th.

"This decision, which has been taken to enable further precautionary measures to be implemented, has the full support of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF)."

The BHB's racing director Paul Greeves said: "We believe that, by having a short break, racing is giving itself the best chance of continuing in the long run and also of staging the Cheltenham Festival next month as scheduled.

"Racing will continue to act in a totally responsible manner."

Peter Webbon, chief veterinary adviser to the Jockey Club, added: "Currently, the risk of spreading the infection from racing is very small, but by taking these thorough measures we are confident we can reduce that to negligible."

There are no contingency plans in place to save the Festival, with officials still planning for the scheduled start of the fixture on March 13th.

Simon Claisse said yesterday: "We have a window in which the spread of the virus can be contained, and so we have to continue with our preparations for the Festival in two weeks' time and hope that by this time next week things are looking a bit more optimistic.

"That is something that we do not want to give a huge amount of thought to at this stage in that there is a great deal of preparation work going on.

"Obviously in terms of the local community it will have a devastating effect for the many businesses.

"In terms of the racing community it is one of the highlights of the year, and really we do not want at this stage to be dwelling on the fact that it might not be happening.

"At the moment we are really taking that possible postponement or abandonment on a day-to-day basis.

"The problem that we foresee is if the suspension of racing gets prolonged beyond the middle of next week we are not going to know how far into the future that might happen - so the best preparation we can make really is to take those steps as and when they arise and take that decision as and when it happens."

Bookmakers have joined the general support within the industry for the decision to suspend horseracing in Britain for seven days.