A TURF JOB, BUT THEY CAN DO IT
Scotland’s racecourses in safe hands with these leading ladies
GETTING up at 5am to walk the course with the deep, wet grass rising above your ankles is not something that sounds particularly attractive. But for three women, clerks of four Scottish racecourses, making sure that the turf is in the perfect condition for racing is their responsibility. For many years the domain of ex-military types, it is becoming increasingly common for women to hold such prominent posts. So for Anthea Morshead at Kelso, Harriet Graham at Perth and Musselburgh and Sulekha Varma at Hamilton Park, the big calls are theirs to make. They juggle the needs of jockeys, trainers, owners, medical and veterinary teams to ensure everything is running smoothly. Then they have to cope with the vagaries of the Scottish weather.
Sportsmail’s KATE McGREAVY spoke to them about the challenges they face.
HOW DID YOU GET INTO RACING?
Anthea Morshead: ‘I rode pointto-pointers before riding under rules, so I was lucky enough to have a fairly successful career as an amateur both over jumps and on the flat. I was also assistant trainer to my dad (Peter Beaumont) and we had some good horses. We had Jodami who won the Gold Cup in 1993. My riding moment came on a horse that I started off in the point to points and he won what’s now the Topham in 1991. I did have my own point-to-point and livery yard as well.’
Harriet Graham: ‘My mother trained racehorses, point-to-pointers, so I’ve kind of been in racing since the word go. I rode from an early age, and rode in point-to-points as a teenager. I had a long break from horses trying to build a career in other things but I came back to it
when I moved back up to Scotland.’
Sulekha Varma: ‘I came to racing quite late in life compared to a lot of people who are involved in the sport. I rode horses from a young age purely through pester power with my parents and they sort of hoped that I’d fall off once and that would be the end of it. But it wasn’t unfortunately for them. So I actually only really got into racing just after my A-levels when I went on a work experience placement to Lucinda Russell’s yard.’
AM: ‘I think having been a female amateur jockey is a fairly good grounding because you grow a thick skin fairly early. Having always been in the male-dominated environment I’ve had that throughout my working life. There are a lot of women clerks now and I think in all aspects and in a lot of different aspects of racing there are a lot more women now than there used to be. I don’t think anyone finds it unusual anymore that there are women clerks so it is definitely a lot easier than it was years ago.’
HG: ‘You do read women in racing are disadvantaged but I just don’t believe that. I just think if you’re using that as an excuse you maybe shouldn’t be doing the job. I think we’re well represented and if you’re good enough you’ll do the job.’
SV: ‘When I first started and I was taken on as a trainee by the Jockey Club there were a couple of trainers who doubted my ability to do the job because of the fact that I was a woman and also the colour of my skin as well. I think we have to recognise that racing is white, male-dominated. Since I trained as a clerk there have been more and more female clerks coming on board and nobody bats an eyelid at a female clerk anymore, which maybe 10-15 years ago they would have done.’
WHAT ARE THE CHALLENGES YOU FACE AS CLERK?
AM: ‘I think the biggest challenge is that it relies on something which is out of our control, which is the weather.’
HG: ‘The weather is your main challenge. Getting the message across to owners and trainers that if they’re sat over in the west, particularly for Musselburgh as it’s a fairly dry course, and often they will perceive as what’s at Ayr which is a fairly wet course that it’s rained solidly a whole week in Ayr and we have only had 2mm at Musselburgh and we are watering. You get trainers ringing up: “Why are you watering it, it’s pouring with rain?” and you say: “Well, actually not at Musselburgh, it’s not rained.”
‘I think if you ask any clerk they’ll say the weather is the biggest challenge of the job. It’s the one thing you can’t predict and you can’t control and yet it does affect everything we do. It’s a very easy job when things are going smoothly. It’s when things start going wrong that you earn your salary really.’
HOW MANY TIMES HAVE YOU HAD TO ABANDON RACING AT THE SCOTTISH COURSE?
AM: ‘Last year despite having a very, very wet winter we didn’t abandon anything. The year before I think we abandoned one but managed to reschedule it the following week. That was a landmark because although it is relatively often done in Ireland, it’s not something that had been done for a meeting to be rescheduled in its entirety.’
HG: ‘I’ve called three off at Perth for waterlogging. Usually at Musselburgh it’s probably one a year that we call off. It’s nearly always for frost. There was one time we abandoned at 12 o’clock and the first race was at 12.45pm. That was a bad day.’
SV: ‘Only one, in September this year.’
WHAT ARE THE EFFECTS IF RACING IS ABANDONED?
AM: ‘If you’ve got 15 race days, you’ve only got 15 trading days of the year. Being in the north, being in Scotland, we have to be mindful of the journeys people have to take on the way here but we still want to get racing on because there are people who live just down the road. In the perfect world, you pray for an easy decision that you either get a -6 or -7 and a cloudy day and you think that’s it, the frost’s not going to come out of the ground or only a -1 and it’s going to come to 8 degrees. To the town and to the local area, racing brings in a huge influx of visitors and money. The hotels, the pubs, the restaurants would all suffer when we lose meetings.’
HG: ‘It’s very, very frustrating. If you’ve had very severe frost and heavy snow and you call it off the day before it’s kind of easy because nobody’s arrived. The worst thing is if you get a really bad, unexpected, heavy frost or high winds and everybody’s there, horses are all there and sometimes even the saddled are coming into the paddock and you have to call it off. That’s only happened once for me at Musselburgh and it was not a good day at all. There’s never good press about it.’
SV: ‘It’s disappointing customers whether they’d be owners, trainers, sponsors, hospitality guests, you know people just coming in for a day’s racing. Unfortunately, that one we abandoned was supposed to be a fundraiser and a day out for the Les Hoey MBE DreamMaker Foundation. So there were a lot of very ill children meant to be coming for a day out at the races and it was going to be a family fun day as well.’
WHAT IS THE MOST UNUSUAL SITUATION YOU HAVE HAD TO DEAL WITH?
AM: ‘We had a loose horse that went off the track in the second race and we never saw it again during racing. It had swum the River Tay with its saddle and bridle on and it ended up in a village called Stanley, nine miles away on the other side of the River Tay.’
HG: ‘My worst day was the day Brian Toomey had a very severe head injury at Perth and he was touch and go. Our medical team dealt with it incredibly well and he went to Dundee and I think he was there for three months and he was in a coma for half of that and it was touch and go all the way. It’s a good ending because he came back to racing and he is absolutely fine but you can understand if it had been the other way, not that it was ever anybody’s fault. It’s a dangerous sport but you feel a sense of responsibility and you also feel incredibly for his family. It’s quite harrowing that side of things.’
SV: ‘We did have a girl at Warwick, a member of staff who forgot to put her dress on under her coat when she came to work. That was quite entertaining. She was so busy getting her son ready for school she forgot to put her dress on, she just put her coat on and her tights and shoes and underwear obviously, she didn’t realise until she got to work.’
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE STATE OF SCOTTISH RACING?
AM: ‘I think we have five fantastic courses. They’re all very individual. They’re all independently run and managed. They’re putting profits back into racing and back into their courses. I think we have some very talented trainers and homegrown jockeys. Geographically it’s hard and I think we have to try that bit harder because obviously geographically to attract horses up to come all the way from the south of England and from Ireland you know it’s expensive. The Scottish tracks are known to racing for always punching above their weight in terms of prize money to attract those horses to come up.’
HG: ‘I think it’s very healthy. We look after our owners, our trainers. I feel we have to try that little bit harder because we are geographically a long way away from the training centres. We have to try harder and our courses are much nicer than a lot of the ones you go to in Yorkshire. Our standards are higher as I think we are always aware of having to try harder and I think that is beginning to pay off now. We are getting more people. Lucinda (Russell) winning the Grand National from Scotland was fabulous. People now realise that actually people do train horses in Scotland and they do a good job of it.’
SV: ‘In terms of trainers we have some of the most successful in the UK based in Scotland — Iain Jardine, Lucinda Russell they’re all going from strength to strength, Jim Goldie has had a lot of success over the years. I think you only have to look at how far people will travel horses to run them up here to know how successful our racecourses are.’
When I first started there were people who doubted my ability SULEKHA VARMA