UK racing meets are going back ‘behind closed doors’ as the government re-imposes pandemic restrictions on retail operations and social gatherings.

On Tuesday, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson bowed to the inevitable and announced new restrictions on entertainment venues, including mandatory shutdowns between 10pm and 5am and halting plans to welcome fans back to sports stadiums starting October 1. Johnson warned that the UK’s stubbornly rising COVID-19 infection rate means the new restrictions could last up to six months.

Among the casualties of the new rules are racecourse trials of allowing a limited number of spectators to watch the action in person. The Newmarket Racecourse in Suffolk said Tuesday that its plan to allow up to 1,000 spectators per day at the three-day Cambridgeshire meeting starting this Thursday was now off, and the meet would go ahead as “a behind closed doors fixture.”

Monday saw Warwick Racecourse welcome a crowd of 500 spectators to its jumps meeting. Organizers praised the experiment as going off without a hitch, but this appears to have been a last hurrah for racing’s efforts to resume something resembling normalcy this year.