Twelve months ago, York Racecourse head groundsman Adrian Kay was left in despair after the Ebor Festival was abandoned. He tells STEVE CARROLL how a year has made all the difference.

LISTENING to the rain hit the windows is an old habit Adrian Kay is finding it hard to break.

On the night before a race meeting, if the panes rattled to the sound of a downpour, York Racecourse’s head groundsman would be up – watching, thinking, hoping.

He wished he had double glazing.

“I sleep a lot better these days,” Kay laughs, as he thinks back to the time when the mere hint of a shower beating down on Knavesmire’s delicate turf could bring a shiver down the spine.

A year ago, Kay suffered the worst moment of his professional career.

The man, who had tended the turf at Aintree and now York, could only watch as Mother Nature fired a wrecking ball into the first four-day Ebor Festival of modern times.

They had record rainfall in August – and it forced an unprecedented abandonment.

“There wasn’t one time leading up to the Ebor Festival where we thought it could be abandoned,” Kay remembered.

“Even on the Tuesday (the opening day) we were looking at ways of getting round it.

“We were looking at ways of moving the rail. We had the blotter in place. When it was called off it was one of my biggest disappointments. It was gut-wrenching. You do tend to take it personally.

“It is nature that beat us and you have to take it on the chin. I look back at it now as a learning curve. We went through it and came out the other side.

“It’s not something that caught us by surprise.

“It was something that was unfortunate because we had record rainfall that month. But I just felt like King Canute.”

The outlook looks rather brighter ahead of next week’s Ebor Festival.

It might be déjà vu as far as the weather is concerned, last Thursday night saw 20 millimetres fall on the track, but a £2.5 million drainage project on Knavesmire is making all the difference.

Ironically, Kay and his team were only weeks away from beginning that project, designed to protect the turf from the extremes of wet and dry, when the weather reminded them just why it was so necessary.

Nine months of work saw a drainage scheme installed, replacement of the irrigation system – fed by drilling a bore-hole 90 metres below ground – and a canter-down installed, saving millions of hoof prints over the course of a 17-day campaign.

They used 24 miles of drainage pipes, enough to reach Leeds railway station, 308 sprinkler heads and put in 452 lateral drains.

This time, things are very different.

“We couldn’t be happier with the track,” Kay said. “We had 126 millimetres for the month of July when the average is around 50 to 60 millimetres. So you can see why we are a bit bullish.

“The track has taken it really well. It was good to firm ground at the last meeting and, in years gone by, we wouldn’t have been in that position.

“When we had the 20mm, we went out and had a look, lifted a man-hole and saw the water which would have still been on the track. It was moving off, going into the culvert and down to the river. That’s where you get job satisfaction.”

And when the rain fell early on the final day of the May Festival, the track also came through with flying colours.

Kay said: “We got an early test in May on the Friday. We had 18mm on the morning of racing and it was good to soft.

“It is still in its infancy and it will still improve.

“When you put a drain in people expect water to disappear but you have to create culverts and get the water into those drains. It’s a system you’ve got to maintain.”

There’s more work to do.

The autumn will see some minor earthworks to “marry in the levels on the new extended south bend and the existing racing surface”.

So what does that mean?

“It’s re-cambering,” Kay explained. “It’s so we can bring the extension into play either at the end of the season or for the start of 2010. It’s so we have got more area on the south bend to work round.

“We will do phase two in September and October.

“There was never a time where I have thought ‘we shouldn’t be doing this. We have a great team and we worked with companies who were hand-picked.

“We had to be comfortable and they were not the cheapest. This is the biggest project on a race track in any 12-month period.

“We couldn’t be happier with how it’s gone and the outlook is very positive.”