BADMINTON DIARY

FEBRUARY 2009

February is a bit quieter than the preceding or successor months, as sales in the Box Office drop off after the January rush and course building is largely on hold. This year however Alan Willis took advantage of a dry week to move most of the portable fences onto the course and they were put into roughly the right position to await the Technical Delegate’s visit in mid March.

Finishing the trade stand allocations and positioning was Jane Tuckwell’s priority task. The new exhibitors have to be sent the forms and send in their money while the detailed layout depends not only on who was where in the previous year, but on grouping together those who rent their tents from us, those who want an electrical supply, those who want wooden floors in the tents – none of which coincide! Finally at the end of the month the jigsaw was complete and the Site Plan in draft for the printers – whereupon a new charity exhibition and a French ‘Fall Simulator’ were added at the very last minute! The latter should be of interest to many riders and trainers, as its objective is to teach riders how to fall off safely, rolling on landing as a gymnast might.

February is a great month for big meetings – as well as the Doctors and Vets, there is the annual Traffic meeting, involving police, car parking contractors, signage contractors, volunteer traffic stewards, the local authority and more. It is a great opportunity for all concerned to renew mostly long standing acquaintance but also to refresh the memory on how things are supposed to work here and the contingency plans in place. We reminded ourselves that a good year like 2008 is almost always followed by a very difficult one!

Another important get together involved the BBC chief engineer, our Badminton TV producer and our closed circuit TV contractor, to discuss all the cabling around the site and how the distribution of pictures can best be achieved. The Event Director and Site Manager were present, but understood almost none of the conversation – except the little bits about providing new ducts under the roads. The 2008 changes in site layout, with the move of the Media Tent and the Organiser’s office, have meant that previously disjointed operations can more easily be located close to each other, which can only help during the event.

A useful planning meeting was held with our Charity of the Year – the Army Benevolent Fund – mostly concerned with the practicalities of bringing so called ‘Light Guns’ on site, to decorate a fence and publicise the work of the Army. It was eventually agreed that if we can have a Challenger tank on the showground, we ought to be able to manage anything else!

Just into early March, we saw the launch of our new range of merchandise (the press release is on the website); and a visit by the BBC production team to fix camera positions and other logistics for the event. Although they only come here once a year, they do have all the records and film from over 50 years of coverage as a reference, but happily there are always a few new ideas and technology to bring into play. This year again will see full coverage of the cross country for those with the ‘red button’ and then a cross country highlights package followed by live show jumping on the Sunday.

As I write, it is exactly 8 weeks until the First Horse Inspection. Entries close on Thursday 19^th March, the course is finalised then with the TD and we are on the helter skelter run in to the event itself – it will be a busy time!

JANUARY 2009

Our Box Office opened as the New Year came in, not without what seem to be the usual teething troubles with the web kiosk, distribution of application forms....and so on!  By the end of January all were (we think!) sorted out, but it has meant that the distribution of tickets is running behind schedule as I write, despite the herculean efforts of Carol Alexander and her team. Somewhat to our surprise, our monthly monitoring of the sales shows that January 2009 has been very nearly the same as 2008, so the recession has not yet stopped our most enthusiastic supporters from booking.

January also sees the close of trade stand applications and our opportunity to invite a few newcomers to fill any gaps. This year, inevitably, there have been slightly more exhibitors dropping out and some taking less space, but the reduction has not been dramatic and we still have many excellent businesses keen to fill the shoes of the leavers.

Alan Willis and his team took full advantage of the heavy frosts early in the month to finish off all the earth works and fences that need building into the ground, so luckily neither the heavy rain nor the snow just recently have affected them. Willis Bros have now left us for a month or so to work on other events and will return to position the large number of ‘portables’ in early March, in time for a camera positioning visit by the BBC and the Technical Delegates’ next trip here.

In January we officially launched our annual charity for 2009 – the Army Benevolent Fund, the Soldier’s Charity.  It gives us particular pleasure to be associated with this in view of the incredible contribution made to Badminton and the whole sport of Eventing by Army personnel, both while serving and when retired. In the early days of the sport after World War II it was naturally dominated by ex military personnel as officials and indeed riders; but we have kept up a close relationship, especially with the Territorial Army and of course the Soldier’s Charity could not be more topical given the Army’s huge commitment overseas.

Every year we go around Badminton Park with our expert tree surgeons to check on the health of the hundreds of trees here, some very ancient. Tree surgery is always required, partly for aesthetic reasons but mostly for safety considerations – branches falling on horses or spectators would not be well received and May is a bad time for branches to fall, as they become heavier with the new growth of leaf. We always hope that we will have finished the job, but each year seems to produce at least 2 – 3 weeks work, at not inconsiderable cost! The Duke and Duchess are particularly interested in the trees here, having planted many thousands for posterity – at least our work contributes to the health of the trees.

Towards the end of the month we had another meeting with Mitsubishi Motors and British Eventing to progress ideas for the 2010 Grassroots Festival. A new logo has been designed, regional finals designated for this autumn and we will be launching the dedicated web microsite in the near future.

Sadly in January we said farewell to a Badminton stalwart in Michael Windell, who died after a long illness. He succeeded his father Jack in dealing with traffic during the event and in true Badminton tradition his son, another farmer on the Badminton estate, continues to help, as does his grandson.

On a happier note, the month saw the wedding of Andrew Tucker and Lucy Brack, a real ‘knees up’ over a long weekend! Andrew acts as our sponsorship consultant and of course comes from a family with long Badminton connections – mother and father both rode here, father commentates, mother judges, grandparents farmed here some years ago; while Lucy is a great rider to the Beaufort hounds and her father gave us many years wonderful help as a stable manager. All in all, an event to be celebrated!

DECEMBER 2008

Many visitors probably think that the preparations for Badminton start in the New Year – which is when our Box Office opens.  In fact of course, the organisation is nearly an all year round activity, with a quiet period in high summer. We traditionally start back full time in the office after Burghley in early September and the autumn has several strands of work for us all.

Firstly, there is the commercial side to look after – particularly setting the prices for public tickets and for the trade stands. This year that process coincided with the full realisation of the ‘credit crunch’ and the economic problems for the country. It was clear that we must minimise any increase in charges and at the same time bear down pretty ruthlessly on our costs if we are to have a financially successful event. We took the important decision that for one year at least we would have a pause in the ever upward march of our prize money, which has gone up in real terms hugely over the past 20 years; and we have had to negotiate tough deals with our many contractors to keep our costs under control.

As this is written in late December, our trade stand applications have closed for our previous exhibitors and while there have been a few drop outs they do not seem to be any more numerous than usual, to our pleasure and relief. The detailed layout of the stands will be done in January with the essential input of Site Manager Harry Verney.

Work has continued in much the same way as in 2007 on the ground for the cross country course and the arenas. We always knew that the improvements were at least a three year programme, though the benefits were happily immediately obvious for the 2008 event. This autumn we have included some big drainage schemes, one at the bottom of the Beaufort Staircase where a lake has been appearing whenever we have heavy rain and others along the cross country course in the park between the House and the Shogun Hollow, the area that has always been the wettest. We very much hope that these will bear fruit this spring and indeed after the very heavy rain over the weekend of 13/14 December the staircase lake disappeared within 24 hours!

Much time has been taken up on another commercial side, relationships with our sponsors. We never take Mitsubishi Motors for granted, but were nevertheless thrilled when they announced their support for the British Eventing Grassroots Championship to be held here from 2010 and at the same time an extension to their agreement with us for a further period through to 2012. We are in the middle of our current Rolex contract which includes the Grand Slam and have finally tied up the loose ends on the FEI HSBC Series, which started at Badminton in 2008 with only 3 weeks notice! These international tie – ins at the very top level of our sport are good news not only for the riders who may win them but also for the profile and PR of the sport generally.

By the end of the year we expect to have finalised arrangements with our other supporting sponsors and we seem to be fortunate enough to continue to attract their support.

The cross country course itself is now planned in outline immediately after the previous event, so that the ground can be prepared through the summer; however actual fence designing does not usually happen until the autumn and the Willis Bros work on the jumps before Christmas. The idea is to finish all the work that disturbs the ground by then – revetting ditches, turfing, banging in posts and so on – because the disturbed ground then has plenty of time to settle and recover before the spring. Nowadays so many of our fences are ‘portables’ that we often have a course building break in January and February before the major activity in March and April.

The other unseen activity for the autumn is the continuous updating of our office and its systems – ie computers, databases, website management etc. We have to be sure that all this is fully completed by Christmas, as there is simply no time to spend in this area once the Box Office is open for business in the New Year – the phones and emails are continuous thereafter, even though most people now book directly on the website. Happily the main office team is unchanged this year, with Sue Ansell and Willa Harford helping Jane Tuckwell, while Carol Alexander’s Box Office team has one newcomer in Jane Harvey, who joins long term regulars Liz Richens and Pat Butler who are now reducing their workload a little by sharing one job – though it will be all hands on deck for the opening couple of weeks!

Despite the economic uncertainties we are looking forward to 2009 at Badminton!