What happens at Goodwood in the winter? Director of racing Ed Arkell explains - and talks about work to attract more international runners to the racecourse
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00:00So Goodwood Racecourse is unusual in a way in that it's a venue that the
00:04public do not see or do not come into between middle of October and the start
00:09of the following May. We're into that period now. Just give us a flavour of
00:13what happens here during that time during the winter months and the
00:18sort of early spring both on the race track and around the site. Very much
00:23just sort of picking up everything you know that needs doing after the season
00:27and the improvements we might want to make for next season. On the track
00:32particularly we cut it very very short as soon as we can after racing, put a big
00:37rake through it which is on the back of a tractor about six meters wide and sort
00:43of beat it up really get rid of all the rubbish out at the bottom, thin it out as
00:47best we can and then we put a overseeder into it and put approximately a tonne's
00:53worth of grass seed into it to produce nice fresh growth for the next season.
00:58Obviously we struggled a bit with that after racing this year because of the
01:02weather but we just had that nice period what sort of middle of November I
01:08suppose when it was dry, dried enough that we could get the machinery back onto it.
01:12So that's all done we're just sort of finishing off tidying bits and pieces up
01:16we'll start power washing the running rail there's sort of five or six miles
01:20worth of running rail that needs power washing for next season and we're going
01:25to start replacing some of the rail this winter as an ongoing project to replace
01:30hopefully all the rail around the racecourse over the next two to three
01:33years so the team have got quite a lot of rail to take down all to the ground
01:38fixings and then replace. It's like painting the fourth bridge in a fourth road bridge
01:43in a way there's always something to just get to the end of the renewal and
01:46replacement than the ones you've done longer ago. Exactly and there's a fair amount of work to be
01:53done you know by the Ops team rounded about the stands and the sites and
01:57there's always painting and bits and pieces of work and because really for
02:01six months of the year it's fairly difficult to get a huge
02:05amount done or certainly big projects you've got a bit of a gap before the
02:08Castle of Goodwood Festival but otherwise you know it is difficult to do any sort
02:13of main work or remedial work so everybody's busy. Yes I'm sure and away
02:18from here you know as Director of Racing another of your roles is to is to sort
02:22of keep the wheels turning in terms of who's going to be coming next season
02:26working with Connections and the international side of things is
02:31something Goodwood have been quite big on in recent years. Tell us a
02:34little bit about that and some of your trips that you undertake to go and talk
02:37to Connections and try to lure them here. Yeah having international runners here is
02:41massively important for Goodwood for the meeting and actually for the wider
02:44racing industry you know it is important and so we do some trips abroad
02:51particularly Australia and Japan. Dubai is a very useful trip just sort of end of
02:57March beginning of April this year a lot of international horses there and the
03:03great thing about going there and talking to Connections there is that you
03:06know they're prepared to travel in the first place because they've got to go
03:09and they're racing in Dubai. We've got some interesting horses hopefully
03:14from Japan to go and speak to there's a horse called Soul Rush who we were
03:20hoping was going to run in the Sussex States here didn't come in the end but
03:24actually won the big mile race in Tokyo just about the 20th of November
03:30something like that so obviously we'll be speaking to them Connections and the
03:34placed horses there and we'll see what happens. And over time the number of
03:39these international runners coming here has grown hasn't it? It's taken time but
03:43you know we're seeing more and more of them each year really, not just from Japan
03:46Australia but from Scandinavia and so on. Yeah, Scandinavia, Czech Republic, we've had a few
03:52conversations with Hunger in Poland who've come to talk to us and seen what
03:57we've done in Scandinavia so it'll be interesting to see whether that
04:01progresses. It would be great if it did. It's been disappointing that we missed Soul Rush for the Sussex this year and Panther Last the year before. Both Panthers Last were injured so we've been very lucky we've had quite a lot of international horses. We could have had more and we'd like a lot more.
04:21I remember Adam Ortworth saying in the past when I've asked him about this you need a lot of stars to align for an international star to come here really
04:29and it only takes one sort of piece of the jigsaw not to quite fit and then they won't come or they won't run when they're here but you can just keep trying.
04:39Yeah of course and probably you didn't realise quite how lucky we were with Deirdre, first international or first Japanese runner rather here and she goes and wins Group 1 and Nick Smith, my counterpart at Ascot, sort of looked at me after she'd won and we were in the parade ring, shook his head and just said you have no idea how lucky you are, this will never happen again.
04:59But we will do our very best to make it happen and he's been travelling the world for 20 odd years for Ascot trying to get the Japanese winner at Ascot and they haven't managed it yet.
05:10It's not an overnight job is it?
05:12It is very very difficult.