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To an outsider it appears that Bill Farnsworth and his team have progressive ideas and have steadily raised the profile of the racecourse over recent years so this seems a great shame. Do any of TRF’s members (particularly those in Scotland and the north) have views they wish to put forward on this story?
It seems to be a lot of posturing between the council and the racecourse.
I can’t for a moment believe that matters won’t be sorted out after a hugely successful day on saturday. Musselburgh is without doubt one of the most go ahead courses in the country and there’s no way the BHA would allow it to fall by the wayside.
Musselburgh is an odd track. The drainage system is essentially too good, meaning you get fast conditions almost all year round. There has been a ridiculous front-runner bias in recent years too, so you’d have to chalk it down as one of the least fair tracks in the country. What Musselburgh lacks in basic merit as a racecourse it makes up with its good prize money and steady stream of well-contested races.
In the context of these revelations, everything does fall into place and begin to make sense. They’ve botched their surface and created a farcical racecourse but Musselburgh’s stock is high because of its bountiful prize money. Trainers love it, good horses visit and field sizes are good. To the naked eye, they look like a racecourse on the up, but have they just been throwing money at their problems and hiding the real issues? Allegations of financial mismanagement and irresponsible budgeting hardly come as a surprise.
This issue has been bubbling under for at least a year, probably more. They lost their Investors In People accreditation last year and that suggested something had gone awry.
Not my favourite place at the moment and I’m only attending those meetings where I’ve got a Kelso Reciprocal. I didn’t go New Year’s Day but was told on the quiet subsequently by members of staff that they couldn’t cope. They were still struggling, with queues for everything, at the meeting on January 3rd even with a crowd a third the size. They charged £30 admission for Easter Saturday meeting which is way over the top for a course which has no better than so-so spectator facilities.
Regarding the drainage, it is what it is for a links land course. It doesn’t get heavy but then it’s unlikely to get too firm either. I’m walked it on a number of occasions and even when ‘good to firm’ there’s still some spring in the turf. The all weather bend on the jumps course was a decent innovation and has worked. There is a front runner bias, but in my opinion it’s the sharpness of the bends more than anything else that causes this. Just occasionally towards the end of the meeting the jockeys get over excited and it sets things up for the hold up horses!
We have five decent courses in Scotland, but none of them are expendable and Musselburgh have seriously taken their eye off the ball in recent times. Prize money is very good, but you need bread and butter to spread the jam on and they are struggling with the basics.
As Rob says the track’s condition is due to it’s location a couple of hundred yards from the firth of forth rather than any drainage. There are plenty of courses which have a bias towards frontrunner, hold up horses, those drawn low and those drawn high.
This seems more of a power struggle between the Racing people and the council rather than financial issues. If Musselburgh were skint then why put on a second £100k race with plans to eventually have five a year?
Having Been going racing at Musselburgh for over twenty years the transformation in facilities and the quality of racing has been remarkable. I haven’t seen inside the new stabling block but I certainly haven’t heard any complaints.
So I still think Musselburgh is a go ahead courses and i’m sure this will be resolved.
Looking very much from the outside in, with no knowledge of goings on other than what’s publicly been reported, I’ve seen Musselburgh change from being, for want of a better phrase, a bit of a dump into a pretty decent venue in the last twenty years or so. Bill Farnsworth has made it a reasonably attractive place to visit. Everything that has been done has improved it and, for me, the final piece of the jigsaw is to replace the ageing main stand, it is downbeat, past its use by and takes the gloss off the place.
You don’t get ‘fast conditions’ all year round LS, you get decent racing ground all year round, Rob’s description of the ground above is a good summation.
The track has flourished in terms of popularity locally, annual attendances almost doubling in the last twenty years or so.
So, it seems very sad that there appears to be a dispute among the management team. The Council took over the track in 1991, effectively saving it as it was in financial dire straits at the time, from the Lothian Racing Syndicate. Those two bodies have run it in partnership ever since, with the council having more members and, therefore, an effective veto on decisions.
I don’t know the councillor who is chairman but Bill Farnsworth seems to have worked wonders, is highly respected and, on race-days, is ubiquitous around the course ensuring the day goes well for patrons. I was there on the day Rob refers to above when they were struggling to deal with the crowds. Bill was helping out on the entrances to keep things moving. The staff I’ve encountered and met all seem passionate about the place so there must be something badly wrong day to day for things to have reached the stage they’ve reached.
I was just commenting on twitter the other day after the ITV coverage from the track saying how good it was to have Scottish racing and Musselburgh in particular portrayed in such a good light.
I sincerely hope common sense prevails. The council need to realise what a jewel in Edinburgh’s crown that track is and I believe that with careful governance it can go on to become even more successful than it already is.Musselburgh does score an incredible -8 on the Turftrax median going scale (second only to Taunton among all UK racecourses), so I think the point about the surface is valid. It is a problem.
There’s nothing wrong with the turf at Musselburgh, and the number of runners at meeting last Saturday on good to firm ground suggests trainers don’t have a problem with it. It’s one of only 2 links land courses in the UK (Yarmouth is the other) and that provides safe quick ground. I’ve walked all the courses in Scotland at one time or another and Musselburgh gives the best feel under foot.
There was a problem with watering a few years ago. They had track side sprinkler heads which were fine in calm conditions, but if the wind blew off the seas Linkfield Road was getting a soaking and the course remained dry. In recent times they have used a track wide boom which provides even coverage of the course.
Thanks for the interesting responses to which my reaction is that there is little wrong with the surface or anything much else at Musselburgh other than further progress by Bill Farnsworth and team is being stymied (leading to understaffing and a dip in morale) by the current council representatives on/chairman of the Joint Racing Committee (JRC).
Having saved the course 26 years ago the local authority is bound to want to continue its dominance on the committee (unless considerable private investment could be found and allowed to buy it out). Am I being too cynical to think that a little bird has had a word in the shell-like of the BHA suggesting that placing the track on temporary license and the publicity generated will help to produce a new council leader/JRC representatives and chairman, following the forthcoming local election, who would find themselves more willing to accede to the bright ideas of the Lothian Racing Syndicate?
Well, 10 months later…things appear to be going the wrong way:
The ELC seem determined to assume control so eventually the course’s future will lie with the BHA. Surely it should continue to grant temporary and permanent licences during the period of legal action and thereafter, even if the council wins, because otherwise the course will close and once that happens the land is more likely to host houses than horses.
The Jockey Club & ARC have expressed interest in taking over Musselburgh Racecourse.
A tender process could take place on June 26th after a meeting by East Lothian Council takes place.
The troubled course has a licence to race until the middle of October.
ARC & the Jockey Club have spoken to the courses but nothing more than that.
Don’t do it Musselburgh! If you think the situation is bad now just wait until ARC get their greedy hands on it and ruins the place. They’ll likely dig up the jumps course, replace it with an all-weather surface and run endless class 6 and 7 mediocre drivel.
ARC successfully leased Doncaster racecourse from the council, run it on their behalf, revamped it and have made the course profitable, so where this idea of yours comes from Phil I do not know
Sigh Doncaster is an exciting course it always has been let me guess a snobby Southerner.
Doncaster’s stand was in disrepair before ARC rebuilt it and now has added the bloodstocks and a new Hilton hotel in 10 years they have revamped the course in ways no one could have predicted especially for a course which is built on common land and has no room for expansion.
Phil Walker wrote:
“Don’t do it Musselburgh! If you think the situation is bad now just wait until ARC get their greedy hands on it and ruins the place. They’ll likely dig up the jumps course, replace it with an all-weather surface […]”=============================
I’m pretty certain that the permitted usages of what is an historic links course as well as a racecourse would likely forbid such a conversion.
At least, they have prevented and continue to prevent the erecting of any floodlights around the existing course, which was one of the main reasons why previous proposals for Musselburgh to house the first artificial surface track in the north ultimately came to nothing.
If anywhere in the ARC portfolio might be being scrutinised with a view to adding a synthetic track, I wonder if it might be Ffos Las, which passed fully into ARC’s ownership this week. Lovely, big, flat sweeping oval – it’d make for a fairer challenge than most AS tracks.
I suppose the matter of whether sufficient Irish horses (say, those, that get balloted out of races at Dundalk) could help the Dave Evanses of this world to service a programme of AS fixtures there could prove key to its feasibility.
gc
Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.
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