Young Irish

Thoroughbred Breeders’ Apprentice Eamon

Moran concludes his year of industry

placements

The final placement of my YITBA Apprenticeship was in the office of Naas Racecourse. Having previously spent time working in the marketing department of Horse Racing Ireland, this was an outstanding opportunity to continue the development of my racecourse marketing experience.

Naas, despite its relative small size of two permanent office personnel, working with manager Tom Ryan, has made significant gains in recent times particularly with the introduction of the new straight six-furlong course.

Thanks to the level of respect in the ITBA as an organisation and favourable reports from my previous placements there was a level of trust put on me coming into the racecourse. This, coupled with the workload already on the racecourse staff, gave me a great opportunity to take certain projects on myself.

There was a great freedom given to me in my duties, which was greatly appreciated, but support was always available too. During my time at Woodlands Park I worked with social media, sales calls, customer queries, direct marketing, designing print advertisements, raceday planning and countless other tasks.

It was a wonderful experience, both professionally and as a racing enthusiast, to see the variety and volume of work that goes into any racemeeting no matter what scale. I was also proud to be able to introduce the concept of ‘Racing Ambassadors’ to the racecourse for the Racing For Beginners evening, The idea behind which was to provide personnel to answer any question that a racegoer might have.

As an aside, with all the talk of the need for the development of a top class facility in Ireland such as the Tipperary Venue in Two-Mile Borris, it baffles me that the redevelopment of Naas never comes into the conversation. The track has an outstanding history of producing champions - Giants Causeway and Footstepsinthesand both won their maidens at the track, Dawn Approach and Sky Lantern both won two-year-old races within 40 minutes of each other two years ago, and the first five in this year’s Group 1 Phoenix Stakes all were Naas graduates.

The track is on the Dublin Commuter belt, ideally situated to target young urban dwelling professionals and is easily accessible by car, bus or train. There is a team in place which has proven its ability to make the most out of what is available to them. These are attributes that would cost huge amounts of money to bring to a greenfield site which even then would take years to prove its worth as a reliable track. In my opinion Naas should be a prime candidate to be Ireland’s next ‘big’ track.

As my time as YITBA Apprentice comes to an end I would like to thank the ITBA as well as Horse Racing Ireland, Coolmore Stud and Naas Racecourse for giving me an amazing opportunity in this industry.

YITBA chairman Mary Kilduff reports: “We are delighted to announce that Eamon Moran secured a position with Horse Racing Ireland and we wish him every success in his new role. Eamon’s fellow YITBA Apprentice 2013/2014 Justin Timmons is starting his final placement with Emerald Bloodstock. YITBA’s 2014/2015 recruit Amy Burke started her first placement last Monday at Bill Dwan’s Castlebridge Consignments and Sarah Dempsey will be joining the team at Jackie Norris’s Jockey Hall Stud next week.”