10:47am Tuesday 9th March 2010
By Sara Pawsey
KATIE Stephens will be a hard act to follow when she leaves Hereford Racecourse. As clerk of the course, general manager and estates manager, she has been responsible for many memorable days of racing during her six-year tenure.
The vibrant 32-year-old introduced the highly successful Ladies Day event at the course and the infamous wife carrying race on the course’s annual beer and cider day, which, for some, has proved the highlight of the racing calendar.
Now though, it’s time for a new challenge with her husband Lee, who is nearing retirement as a National Hunt jockey.
Katie holds her own permit to train horses and she and Lee want to develop a pre-training yard in Herefordshire.
As she reflected on the last six years as boss at Hereford, she revealed exactly how stressful the job has been.
She said: “It is fraught with sleepless nights and constant monitoring of the weather, which is absolutely vital to make sure the course is safe for the horses, which is paramount.
“The positioning of the white running rail and the hurdles are dependent on the state of the ground.
Watering in the summer is also vital and although we build weather events into the programme, it can always take us by surprise.”
That has been especially so during this winter when she suffered catastrophe amid appalling weather conditions and inches of snow.
Katie and her team had been preparing for a big day’s racing on January 31.
They had checked out the weather and planned accordingly but were caught out by what was on top of the course’s protective weather covering – not the state of the ground underneath.
Katie said: “It was dire and was one of my worst moments at Hereford. As always before a big day’s racing I had a restless night before checking the course at 6.30am.
“We had covered its 72 hectares with carrot fleece which farmers use to protect their crops and we knew protects the ground to minus two degrees.
“We started to lay it two days before as we knew it would get very cold and battened it down with 3,000 sandbags.
“Then we had a blizzard that no one had expected, which after another night of frost and ball bearing-like snow, left huge puddles on the fleece which started to freeze up.
“We had barely lifted a furlong when we realised the fleece was being ripped by ice lying on the top. It was so frozen we couldn’t lift it off. Ironically, the ground that we had battled so hard to keep from freezing was fine. We just couldn’t get the protection off in time.
“Which just goes to prove there are some things for which you can never legislate.”
As for the highs – and there have been many – Katie says it’s great to know that the course has been the nursery for the careers of many a successful racehorse.
The charity days, too, that Katie introduced for the Riding for Disabled Association and cancer charities, among others, have raised a lot of money.
She has also developed successful non-race day business at the course such as conferences, weddings and banqueting facilities.
Katie said: “It’s the notorious wife carrying race, for which the winner receives his wife’s weight in beer, that has got us the most publicity for the course.”
She always wanted to be a racecourse manager and has worked at point-topoint yards and raced herself, but a chance remark from a racing aficionado left her in doubt that working with horses was never going to financially enable her to get her own.
So Katie started university and got a place on the prestigious British Horse Racing Authority graduate development programme where, after being sponsored by famous racecourse caterers Letherby and Christopher, she learnt every aspect of racecourse management.
She quickly became assistant manager at Wincanton Racecourse before becoming prime candidate for the Hereford position.
She said: “I got the job at Hereford and moved up here with my dogs and a suitcase and not knowing a soul. I got a fantastic team together and were on a roll.”
However, after taking maternity leave to have her daughter, Katie returned to find some changes and those, coupled with the recession meant she felt it was time for a new challenge.
Katie said: “It’s a wrench to leave because I have had the best time at Hereford where I have learnt so much and had such great people around me. I hold a permit to train horses and have a nice yard and that is the direction Lee and I will now be going in.”
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