Equestrian
Heading past the one furlong mark As well as Mark and his team of four,
Harriet relies on six part-time staff who are engaged for big jobs, and an outsourced ground repair team who come in after racing to tread in and apply divot mix. “They are invaluable - they work until it is dark and then come back the next morning, not stopping until the job is done,” she comments. The general public have free access to the course, not to mention the golfers who actually cross the track during their rounds, so minimising their impact is all part of the job. “We also host events such as the New Year Sprint and trotting races. But we try
Punters gather at the winning post
to keep the public off the racing surface where possible,” Harriet explains. “However, vandalism can be an issue, from burning fences to breaking rails, so it is just something we have to keep an eye out for.”
Plans for the future include adding an
all-weather strip for half a furlong on the flat track to prevent the bends getting chopped up, but all developments have to be budget led. “We’re not affected by local authority cuts, but our aim is to have a good business plan to make money that can be reinvested in the racecourse,” says Harriet.
The will to offer good racing with limited resources caught the eye of the
Racecourse Groundstaff Awards’ judges in 2011 and, this year, the team again ‘went the extra mile’ in spectacular fashion, shaking off the big freeze to reschedule Musselburgh’s Cheltenham trials day in early February when the rest of the country was still under ice. “We applied for the fixture and trainers were desperate to race; if the forecast had been wrong it could have been tricky! But, the course was ready for us to run the week before when we were frozen off so, as the temperatures rose to 9O
C, it was simply a matter of getting the staff in place so that we could provide that opportunity,” says Harriet.
APRIL/MAY 2012 PC 105
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