With Pitchcare, ALS and Fornells Fencing sponsoring the Neil Wyatt Racecourse Groundstaff awards for the next three years, we thought it would be timely to catch up with the team who won the 2008 Flat trophy. Jeremy Martin, Clerk of the Course at Salisbury Racecourse, explains his working practices and his relationship with Head Groundsman, Richard Hayter.
Tom James meets a racing thoroughbred
Richard Hayter (with trophy), Head Groundsman at Salisbury Racecourse, and his team
TFlat Out!
he horseracing heritage at Salisbury is one of the longest-standing in the country, dating back to the 1500s when the first meeting on this historic downland site was recorded. The flat-racing course sprawls across
48 acres of the Pembroke estate, sitting next door to the Salisbury & South Wilts Golf Club, and enjoying a 999-year lease from estate-owner, The Earl of Pembroke, whose seat is the magnificent Palladian- style Wilton House nearby. The flat-racing course sprawls across
48 acres of the Pembroke estate, sitting next door to the Salisbury & South Wilts Golf Club, and enjoying a 40-year lease from estate-owner, The Earl of Pembroke, whose seat is the magnificent Palladian- style Wilton House nearby.
Although independent of one another, the two sporting venues collaborate in friendly fashion when the need arises. In an era when managers are assuming power at an ever earlier age, the disclosure by Clerk of the Course, Jeremy Martin, that he is still only 38, and that he had already squeezed in a hefty
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amount of experience before moving to Salisbury, comes as something of a revelation. Clearly, his career has moved ahead at the gallop rather than a canter and his cheery demeanour and ‘easy’ management style shouts success at every twist and turn.
Also estates manager of the course,
Jeremy came on board nearly a decade ago, in January 2001, arriving from Brighton Racecourse, where he had even, by then, held the clerk’s post for three years.
Now in his ninth season at Salisbury,
Jeremy has spent no fewer than eleven years as a clerk of the course. The old cliché ‘It’s in his blood’ springs to mind, and with good reason, as he has worked in racing since leaving school. “I’d always been interested in racing as a young man and completed a three-year diploma in horse management upon leaving school,” he explains. “To be a clerk of the course was my burning ambition though, and I’ve been fortunate in my career to make the most of the
opportunities I’ve had, which meant I could enter the position of clerk of the course while still at a relatively young age – coming to the post at twenty-seven when at Brighton.”
While working for Northern Racing, and completing his clerk training at Brighton, Jeremy gained invaluable experience clerking on race days at tracks such as Uttoxeter, Newcastle and Chepstow. When the post as clerk and manager at Salisbury fell vacant, it was a position he was not about to miss out on. “The course is one well regarded by those in the racing industry,” he says, “and the move was a step up that I wanted to take.”
The going’s not always good when running and managing a successful racecourse, Jeremy concedes, and the recession has impacted on the business over the last two years, he admits, but Salisbury is proving to be resilient in tough times.
He places a priority on avoiding the need to cancel race days, even more so recently, because of the attendant loss of
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