Furlough, divers and pump problems: Yarmouth's tricky preparation for racing

Yarmouth became the first course in Britain to stage Flat racing on turf on Wednesday after overcoming a range of obstacles in combating last month's hot and dry weather.

A pump problem with the watering system had to be fixed by a diver going into the reservoir, while the track's clerk of the course was furloughed until mid-May. The course had faced a race against time to get the track in shape for the meeting since racing's return – watering the track for 16 hours a day.

Hot and dry weather has proved a challenge for the grounds team at YarmouthCredit: Alan Crowhurst

To make things even harder, May was one of the hottest and driest months on record in Britain, adding further strain to the grounds team at Yarmouth.

Mark Spincer, Arc racing division managing director, said: "Once the fixture list was confirmed we lost two or three days of watering with a pump problem.

Yarmouth racecard

"The solution was to get a diver to change the pump but they were concerned that the only way to make it work was to empty the reservoir and we didn't want to do that because we couldn't afford to lose 15 hours of watering which would be very difficult to catch up.

"So we've put in a hired pump but every time we move we have got go back, stop the pump, disconnect, move the watering kit, reconnect it and start the pump again.

"They've had hardly any rain since February, it's a sand track and it was the hottest May for more than 100 years.

"The clerk of the course Richard Aldous was furloughed and he came back in mid-May, around about the time we got the fixtures confirmed. We've either had a clerk or a head groundsman at every single racecourse but we've flicked it around to give us flexibility.

"It was our initial belief that when racing resumed it would not be on turf for at least one or two weeks."

Dust and sand are left in the wake of runners at YarmouthCredit: Edward Whitaker

Arc have plenty of meetings scheduled on the all-weather in the first week. Newcastle raced on Monday and Tuesday and are in action again on Thursday, while there is action at Lingfield on Friday.

Spincer said: "It was not ideal for us to start on turf, we wanted to stay on the all-weather at Newcastle and Lingfield for the first couple of weeks to allow everybody the time to be in position to get everything right from a safety factor."

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