Rasen to be cheerful...
Sulekha Varma is one of a growing number of young women taking prominent roles in horse racing. As Clerk of the Course at Market Rasen, she and her team of four groundstaff have won ‘Best National Hunt Track’ in the annual Neil Wyatt Awards
D
elivering safe, consistent going, summer and winter, for a popular jump racing programme is a tall
order for any racecourse. The effort put in to achieve this by Market Rasen in Lincolnshire, with a team of just four full time groundstaff, has been recognised with the title of best national hunt track in the Neil Wyatt Groundstaff Awards.
Clerk of the Course, Sulekha Varma, gives the majority of the credit to her highly experienced and dedicated groundstaff team. “They know their job and how best to achieve it,” she says. Sulekha has been in the role for just over a year, and also has responsibility for nearby flat racing track, Nottingham, that is, like Market Rasen, owned by Jockey Club Racecourses. With nineteen fixtures scheduled for 2011, Market Rasen is at the forefront of the summer jumping season, hosting the Summer Plate in July and Prelude Chase in September, two of the
campaign’s most prestigious prizes. The consistency of the going has attracted increasingly large and high quality fields throughout the summer campaign. A product of the British Horseracing Authority’s graduate programme, Sulekha was a keen horse rider as a child, but initially planned to be a racing journalist. Jobs with trainer, Lucinda, Russell, and in Arab racing, led to a trainee clerk’s role at Haydock with mentor Kirkland Tellwright and, when Nick Patton moved on from Nottingham and Market Rasen in 2010, Sulekha stepped into his shoes. At the time, Market Rasen had just seen a £300,000 redevelopment programme, which involved the incorporation of the old point-to-point course into the main track. “This involved the relocation of the
service road that was formerly on the inside of the track, returfing this ground, moving the ring main and
resiting some greens and tees on the golf course in the centre,” Sulekha explains. “The bend out of the back straight was also rebuilt and recambered, and ground on the Bungalow Bend after the winning post incorporated by extending the culvert and levelling the remaining ground.” The work was completed in summer 2008, but it was January 2010 before the new ground was ready to race on. “We have used Sheppy No 16 (18:2:12) fertiliser, supplied by Lincsgreen, to encourage new growth, and we vertidrain the ground regularly too,” says Sulekha. “The main benefit of the redevelopment is that it gives us a lot more space to work with, so we can rest the inside of the track through the summer and offer fresh ground in the winter - we are not racing over ground that has been watered all summer.”
She adds that the new ground is also quicker than the rest of the course,
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148