Events Manager
British Racing School

Margo W

00:00:03 My name is Margo W and I am Events Manager. Events Manager will co-ordinate and run events from sort of taking the details and producing function sheets that can be used by not only the client but also by all the contractors. And then on the day, managing the event itself. It’s challenging because when an event’s not going well, the thing that will make a difference is how you handle it. If you handle it badly then the client is unlikely to return. But when an event goes well, it’s very very rewarding.

00:00:39 What I’ve brought with me today was a radio, which is used at the race course. On non race days and also race days, this will keep us in touch with all the first aiders, essential for our health and safety. Also, if there is a problem with certain area we need to contact someone quickly, this is what we use. There’ll be different people on different challenges, whether it be maintenance, whether it be possibly the commercial side of things, the sales people if they’re needed to handle a complaint.

00:02:00 From school – like I say I always had this passion for the horse racing industry, and I started off working in horse racing, which I was – took me all around the world. Worked in Australia for three years. When I returned from Australia, although I very much still enjoyed my job, I didn’t really feel that there was that much of a future in it for me. I realised that being a jump jockey wasn’t something that was going to happen. I think the travelling, the time I spent in Australia, was extremely useful – because once you’ve been a long way away, when you come back it’s sort of a maybe little bit easier to be reflective on where you are and where you’re going. And maybe if I hadn’t done that, I would have been more satisfied in what I was doing. But having been away and come back, I wanted a little bit more out of my career. Which is probably what’s caused me to sort of take a different career path.

00:02:13 So I decided to go back to school and retrain. I did an Access to Higher Education course, and then I went on and did a BSc in Equine Science in International Thoroughbred Management at Oxford Brookes University. I then applied for a Commercial Sales Assistant – Executive – at the racecourse, which was a role I got. And then I sort of started to understand how events worked and ran, sort of the creative that can be involved in sales and organising and running events.

00:02:50 Yes certainly, I would be looking further ahead than where I am at the moment, I definitely see the role that I’m doing at present as a stepping stone rather than where I want to be. I would like to maybe be a Commercial Manager of a large racecourse, or certainly still involved in the horse racing industry, and definitely in the commercial sector.

00:03:13 I do actually still ride out every morning before I go to work, so it does mean that I get up at five o’clock every morning, and I definitely do that for pleasure. But the main time that I spend with my family would be at weekends. The riding out side of my career as such was – obviously which is what’s led me to where I am, and it very much keeps me, I feel, involved at the grass roots of the industry, which is probably partly why I enjoy it. It’s something that I’ve done since I was 15 or 16 years of age, and I think not getting up and doing it every morning would be breaking a fairly entrenched habit.

00:03:59 ENDS