Equestrian
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Fornells 10100 Running Rail
Fornells 10108 Running Rail
Lingfield Park from the air
the racing public. It did happen this last winter, when a jump meeting was abandoned because of waterlogging, but a special flat meeting for National Hunt horses was re-arranged for the all-weather track. Last winter kept many NH horses at the stables and this was a welcome opportunity for a competitive run. NH horses are generally bigger and heavier than flat horses and all that had to be done to the Polytrack course was to power harrow the surface deeper than usual to create the slightly softer going that they are used to. The all-weather facility at Lingfield Park means it is always open for business. Its Polytrack is the newest of all UK courses. Two of Arena’s other courses with it are Wolverhamption, which is exclusively all-weather, and Southwell, which has a fibresand surface.
“Lingfield does not have too much width on its turf course, so to manage the number of fixtures we regularly share the races between the turf and Polytrack surfaces,” says Neil. “Longer races will be run on the turf round course: shorter ones on the Polytrack and then vice versa with shorter turf races being run on the straight course. The all-weather gives us this flexibility.”
Losing a day’s racing is very
rare at Lingfield Park. It did happen once last December due to heavy race day snow. The new Polytrack material, because it is somewhat stickier than for the previous track,
rather stuck to equipment rollers, something not encountered before. If snow falls the day before race day, or even overnight, there is a grader that can pull snow to the outside rail, enabling the rest of the surface to be worked in the usual way. So, maybe it is just a whisker short of 100 percent all- weather, but that is harsh on a way of almost always guaranteeing racing. There is still, perhaps, a bit of a stigma, a bit of resistance, from the racing public towards all-weather racing. It may not be quite the spectacle of true turf, but the flexibility it offers cannot be doubted, and Lingfield Park has embraced it and makes it work.
Maintenance in early summer is especially challenging. Three fixtures in a week in May puts constraints on Jon’s team of ten.
“Everybody gets sucked into race day duties,” he says. “For all weather racing, there is less presentation work other than making sure there is a level of surface consistency. We try not to have specialists, but get everyone familiar with all the necessary tasks. Having said that, in George Ash, we probably have the most experienced Polytrack operative in the world. He’s worked on the all-weather surfaces at Lingfield since they were first introduced twenty-four years ago, and he’s a master at getting them to look superb and race magnificently.” “Turf racing does still seem to have a greater appeal to
JUNE/JULY 2013 PC 107
Crowd Barrier & Gates
UK Distributers of Fornells Products 01748822666 / 07966529666
www.wattfences.com billwattfences@aol.com
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