Huntingdon - What A Joke

Shadow Leader

Shadow Leader

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Nov 9, 2003
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It appears we have another strong contender for the Arse Cup - Fiona Needham.

Wtf went on at Huntingdon today?!

Here's a timeline :

- text received last night from Weatherby's informing me of a precautionary inspection at 0930 for today's meeting.

- text received soon after 0930 (whilst on horseback!) informing me of a FURTHER precautionary [!!!!!!!] inspection at 1030.

- text received c.1045 informing me, meeting goes ahead.

- text received from a mate at 1107 saying
Divets, filled with sand, still frozen according to mate of mine who has just walked track [unquote]

- took the decision that having ridden out 2 lots I don't fancy trogging up to Huntingdon only to hear that the horse has been declared a NR, as I'm fully expecting after hearing the reports that the track is in a bad state.

- 1145, text received saying that "due to a drop in temperature" [my arse!!!!!!!!!] there is a further precautionary [??????!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!!!!!] inspection at 1200

- 1150, ring yard to find out if horse intended runner, told that he hadn't yet been pulled out yet Ms Needham is not the most popular clerk of the course ever......

- 1214, received text from LordH saying the horse has been pulled out, as expected (refers to telephone conversation held earlier when we both came to same conclusion) ~ glad that I didn't start out on the trip up there!

- c. 1250, sit down with a mate and switch on ATR - "Huntingdon abandoned due to "unsafe ground" " according to the strapline.

What a farce. The mate who texted me earlier rung me shortly before 12 to tell me that his mate who walked the track had reported that the additional inspection was held as a group of trainers and jockeys, led by Alan King, demanded another look as they didn't feel the track was fit to race after it had been passed as raceable.

There was a quote in the RP saying that one top jockey had said he wouldn't even trot a horse on the track.

Heads should roll - whoever made the decision to pass the track as fit to race, or whoever is deemed to carry the can in such an event, wants fining, and fining heavily. The HRA seem to want to be seen to be justifying their existence, so they should get off their backsides and hold a major enquiry as to how this was nearly allowed to happen.
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I was gobsmacked that no inspection had been called yesterday afternoon looking at the forecast and only found out that they were inspecting when I checked teletext this morning.

Needham has to walk surely,it's hardly as if it's her first offence after previous similar farces at Warwick both on the flat and NH courses there.
 
There have been problems on the track with horses slipping and jocks complaining of unsafe ground for the last two meetings - sounds like Huntingdon now has a seriously damaged track, and the NH season not yet half way through. Needham should resign, and if she doesn't she should be made to walk.

I'm about an hour and a half away - may not be the same temp exactly but it's been really freezing up here for two or three days now with the frost just not coming out of the ground, so this was easily forseeable
 
Spokesman John Maxse said: ""The incidents at Warwick in the summer and Huntingdon today areof a completely different nature.

"Fiona is an extremely capable clerk of the course who has consistently overseen the delivery of racing surfaces at Huntingdon and Warwick that meet the high standards that are expected of all Jockey Club Racecourses.She retains the group's full support and we are confident that the conclusion of the disciplinary panel's inquiry into the Warwick abandonment will find that she was not culpable for the eventual outcome."

What a ****!
 
Suggest you owners should get together and make a complaint via the ROA

My freinds the Keebles who own Meadow Hawk weren't best pleased when he slipped there in the back straight a few weeks ago - jocks said there were great loose divots then, which horses could put their hooves in, and a lot of sanding was going on round the bends - same at the following meeting, the last, iirc
 
PS There is something very wrong when a Clerk can declare a course fit and safe, and then the pros - jocks and trainers - who have walked it say it's definitely dangerous, which is clearly what happened here
 
Didn't we have the same thing (a version of it) at Newbury last year.

Is it the dangerous misjudgement, or the fact that a few folk have been mucked about that's upsetting people? If it's the latter, then I've got news for the poor souls in the racing game, it happens to thousands of us on a daily basis. I've set off for work many times this year, only to be mucked about by First Great Western Trains or the dreaded Highways Agency. In fact FGW produced a stunning piece of incompetance this week which even by their own high standards takes some surpassing. The result is that no one knows when the trains run now as the revise dtimetable they've printed and posted at Bicester Twon entitled "Bicester to Oxford" has a minor defect. The times of the trains underneath concern a service between Worcester and Paddington. It's an unmanned station too, so it's really pot luck now :xmassnowlaugh:
 
Getting back to the topic (everyone).....

It seems very hard to shift these clerk of the courses...remember the mess up with the lady from Lingfield as well. Seemed to take an age before she finally stepped down.
 
To be fair, Stickels was a judge but I agree.

How JC Racecourses can defend her is beyond me. Several trainers and jockeys have said the course wasn't ever raceable and it never looked like ot could be - so the question must be asked, why in the name of God did she declare the track fit to race? Did she want to kill horses and jockeys?
 
I wouldn't interpret Maxse's response as being that supportive to be honest. If he chastised her in public he'd be accussed (quite rightly) of behaving inappropriately, so he had to offer some support. The word "capable" in my experience is usually a code for the minimum. 'Capable' is onl;y one step above someone expressing their confidence etc and we all know what happens when a football chairman says that. If he'd wanted to, there are plenty more words in The English language open to him, as well as unequivicol ways of expressing them.
 
Probably an unpopular comment, but thank goodness if the ground was unsafe (whenever or whoever finally decided) that the racing was abandoned. Much better to have very frustrated owners & trainers & lots of dead mileage (and tired horses going home) rather than dead or injured horses and/or jockeys. The timing was not ideal BUT sometimes you have to let the ultimate decision lie with the jockeys and trainers once they can physically walk the course.

I can remember going as an owner to Aintree and I was travelling from Berkshire and we were told to stop at every service station for an update en route as we no one was sure if the racing would go ahead or not. Eventually it did. Frustrating it was but the welfare of the horses and jockeys is always the most important factor. By the time we arrived we watched our race, had a coffee and turned round and drove 5.5 hours home again.
 
I have no problem with the abandonment of the meeting; it simply should have been abandoned earlier rather than have erroneously passed an inspection. Here's what I posted on TRF:

I wasted the best part of four hours dragging myself up to see Bally Conn race (I say race, he'd have pulled himself up on the final circuit just for the hell of it ~ but that's by the by) and was absolutely livid when I heard that it had been abandoned after passing an earlier inspection.

Fiona Needham is sailing very close to the wind when she claims that "the ground didn't seem too bad" at 09:30, or indeed that it had improved considerably by 10:30. The ground was frozen at nine, frozen at ten, frozen at eleven and frozen at noon. Everyone who brought horses to the track had no illusions about the viability of racing and yet Ms Needham is given free rein by Jockey Club Racecourses* to misrepresent her customers to an enormous extent. When a track which is palpably unsafe is deemed raceable then owners, trainers, jockeys and the general public are effectively defrauded. I have to pay for the expense of taking my horse to the races and as the meeting was abandoned before I arrived, I get no compensation for my wasted journey.

Finally, why do I have to put up with the bloody word "precautionary"? An inspection of Cheltenham today before deciding to put down covers would be precautionary. Inspecting a frozen track three times (even the final inspection at 12 was deemed to be "precautionary"~ ye gods!! ) and pretending it might improve is in no way precautionary. I know, because I've looked it up in a bleedin' dictionary.
 
Originally posted by Bar the Bull@Dec 13 2007, 09:17 PM
Another blow for those who hold the view that woman are as capable as men.
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In fact Bar that's one of the aspects of this incidence which makes me really angry. It's so hard for women to break into traditional male preserves like this, and then this silly cow and muppetts like Stickels go and give all the misogynists a stick with which to beat us :suspect: :angy: :angy:
 
Its nice to see that nobody let the unfortunate Huntingdon episode get to them.

I am currently on the train to Doncaster for a fine days sport.... oh , what was that ?

:xmassanta:

I preferred the pre-mobile phone days when you actually got to the track before finding it white and deserted.
 
The same as Rory, I had no problem whatsoever with the meeting being abandoned either - it was more the pissing about and the unbelievable decision "fit to race" passed shortly after the second inspection. We can't have clerks of the course passing dangerous tracks as raceable. Time for hefty fines and/or sackings.
 
What p*sses me off is when people like Maxsie who are based in London rush out giving their "full support" to someone without first ascertaining the facts - viz that the track at Huntingdon has been developing problems for a few weeks now. Has he walked the damn course like the jocks and trainers? -has he put his going stick into the frozen sod? - has he hell!
 
More nonsense at Folkestone yesterday:

FOLKESTONE was forced to abandon racing on Tuesday because of a frozen track after the course predicted on Monday that an inspection would not be necessary.

Despite most of the country being gripped by freezing temperatures, especially in the south, no measures were taken at the Kent course. Officials then found themselves having to announce that an inspection was necessary at 9am.

After that and another inspection at 10.30am proved inconclusive, it was decided that it would be best to look again at 11.30am, but an announcement was made at 11.15am that officials had decided that conditions were not improving fast enough for racing to take place.
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Morning all :)

The abandonment of Folkestone came as a surprise to me after what had been a cloudy and frost-free night in London (unlike this morning).

There are, for me, three issues/questions that come out of this and the previous fiasco at Huntingdon - I excuse Doncaster because the Clerk pulled the meeting at 6.45am which, I think, is perfectly acceptable.

1) Should ALL racecourses have frost covers ? I don't find it strange that Arena haven't invested in them at either Doncaster or Folkestone given the penny-pinching attitude that is pervasive in that entire operation. Yet Plumpton have them and that apparently saved Monday's card. It is surely ridiculous that a Grade 1 course like Doncaster isn't protected from frost and yet a lower-grade (no disrespect to East Sussex) venue has them.

Is it not time for the BHA to instruct ALL courses wanting to stage turf fixtures between November and March to have frost covers ? After all, the BHA insists drainage is adequate and God knows how much has been spent on that in recent times at places like Cheltenham and Ascot.

2) Should it be the responsibility of the Clerk of the Course to take the decision ? The Clerk is employed by the Owners of the racecourses and it is in the commercial interests of the track that racing takes place. Without wishing to allege anything, does anyone think racecourse executives put pressure on Clerks to issue upbeat bulletins in order to re-assure prospective racegoers and owners and trainers that all is well to encourage both attendance and entries ?

IF the Clerk of the Course was a BHA employee, we might see more realisitic going reports as well. After all, who calls of a match in football ? Not the managers or the Chairman of the home club but the referee, an impartial official.

Arena had the monopoly of racing last Saturday (apart from Cheltenham). I think they were very lucky to race at Lingfield. Had the skies cleared and the temperature dropped (as it can do very sharply down there), we might have seen that meeting go down as well.

3) The climate is a funny thing and not well understood by everyone. It takes time for the ground to warm at this time of the year after an overnight frost and if it clouds up, the temperature can actually fall back so a course which looked on the way to being safe at 9.30am might, under certain cirumstances, be unraceable at 10.30.

This is the problem with "early" or "late" decisions in borderline situations. Had Huntingdon been abandoned at 7am and then the course been raceable by noon, Fiona Needham would also have taken plnty of flak. A Clerk has to go by a thorough inspection of the surface AND constant communication with the local Met office. Another good example is fog - a course which is fogbound at 11.30 might be clear by noon if a breeze picks up.

It's a difficult decision (or can be) given the amounts of money involved but I accept that the first and sole guidance must be the safety of the participants. Needham got it wrong at Huntingdon - one day, a Clerk will be criticised for calling off a meeting too early, it's a near-impossible line.
 
I can see a lot of sense on your suggestion that someone other than the clerk of the course makes the decision to race, mainly on the commercial grounds you outline as this is what racecourses are completely driven by. I'm not su sure that I'd trust someone from the BHA to make such a decision though going by the organisation's (and that of its predecessor, the JC) track record!! :D

I agree with your final point about the near-impossible line, my major gripe with this scenario is that Huntingdon was never in a fit situation to race nor even close to it yet Needham chose to approve the meeting as safe to go ahead. It was down to the trainers and jockeys to kick up about it before they even had another look, let alone called off the meeting, which just isn't good enough in my book.

Today I was speaking to the wife of a trainer (who had a runner declared at Huntingdon last week) and she said that the ground was appalling. Her husband rang her whilst on the track, having set out from home at 0630, to say that there was no way he would run his horse on the ground as it was still frozen in many places. The many sand filled divots I was previously told about were described by her as "frozen solid and hard as concrete". How that can be passed as safe and raceable I have no idea!
 
Courtesy of The Jockey Club racecourse website. :)


Head Groundsman
Huntingdon Racecourse is part of the Jockey Club Racecourses group of 14 racecourses, and apart from horseracing provides facilities for conferencing, banqueting and other events.
We now have a vacancy for a Head Groundsman and require a hands on individual who will develop and enhance the quality of the racing surface and build on the current high standards. Estate and grounds management is also an important part of the role as Huntingdon prides itself on the grounds and has a thriving all year round events and leisure business. You will have a proven track record in turf husbandry and grounds maintenance plus the ability to manage and motivate a team. A good eye for detail is essential, along with the ability to think and plan strategically, organisational skills, drive, initiative and enthusiasm are also essential.
If you are interested please send your CV and covering letter along with salary expectations to: Mrs Lynne Bulmer, Group HR Manager, Epsom Downs Racecourse, Epsom Downs, Surrey, KT18 5LQ
Closing Date for applications: 13th February 2008
 
I'm hoping you've only reproduced half of the article Kathy, and that they also have a vacancy for a clerk of the course with eyes in their head?! :laughing:
 
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