JUMP racing remains at the heart of Wetherby Racecourse, insists chief executive Jonjo Sanderson.

The new season at the West Yorkshire track gets under way on Wednesday, October 15 with more than £200,000 having been spent in the off-season to improve the track and its facilities.

For the sixth year running, 1,000 tonnes of top dressing has been applied to the newer section of track, which makes up just under half of the racecourse, and verti-draining has been carried out.

Investment has also gone into the service road, new perimeter fencing and the winner's enclosure.

Wetherby is due to hold 20 racedays next year, two more than the previous season, with Flat racing being introduced for the first time following a successful trial earlier in the summer.

Sanderson is hoping for four days of racing on the Flat in 2015, with the first on Sunday, April 26, while there will be 16 Jump fixtures.

But he said: "It is exciting to have Flat racing coming to Wetherby, which means the racecourse and its excellent facilities will be in use for more of the year but, as we have said from the outset of this project, Jump racing will remain our core activity."

On the improvements, he added: "The top dressing adds between a quarter of an inch and a half-inch each year to the new section of the course, which covers about ten acres. That section of track is probably somewhere between two and a half and three inches higher now than when we started out this work in 2009 and is all the better for it.

"We are expecting about ten millimetres of rain between now and October 15."