Morning, all.
I see everyone's ignored Stick (no change there, then). The reason for the early start at Stratford is that it's one of the trial series of six Friday midday 'matinee' meetings which, along with four Tuesday 'twilight' meetings have been allocated by the BHA. As I understand it, these ten extra autumn fixtures are partly to offset the loss of meetings to weather earlier in the year (more than 80 overall, apparently), and partly to experiment with betting and attendance patterns at the new times - there seems to be a theory that in the early autumn,the lunch period
is busier in betting shops than mid-afternoon. I think you can assume that it's being done more to please the big bookmakers than in any spirit of demographic or sociological enquiry, but I suppose it must benefit smaller courses to a degree.
There's a BHA newsletter about all this somewhere on the net, dating from about the first week in September.