A new era begins at Newton Abbot Racecourse

The racing season is upon us at Newton Abbot and for the first time in more than three decades, there is new leadership taking the next steps toward success.

After 35 years at Newton Races, Pat Masterson hung up the reins at the end of 2024, handing over stewardship to the vast experience of John Baker, a former chief at the biggest race of them all.

“My love of the sport at the age of five, watching Red Rum catch Crisp in the 1973 Grand National,” said Baker. “I remember my Grandad sitting me down to watch and I recall the drama was just amazing, I was hooked on the sport from that day.

“My Grandad was my hero and that was the thing we shared when growing up in Stockport, which is really a football town. My dad was a Manchester United fan, but he left us when I was two years-old, so I decided to follow City. My mum still lives in Stockport, and I have school friends that I still see.

“I went to University in Kent, a Uni with a real sporting culture, and my idea was to be a sports journalist. I got my degree and had a couple of shifts on the Racing Post before helping out at an accountancy firm in Stockport.

“I had an interview with Weatherbys to edit the Jockey Club formbook. We would input the data feed from races across the day and I loved it. A few people from there have gone on to write some great books about racing.

“I was lucky enough to get a job at the Racecourse Association, which involved a lot of PR work. Part of the job was to look after the sponsors, which included a couple of days in Newton Abbot, and this was around 1993.

“My next stop was at Plumpton in Sussex, and I really enjoyed being based at a racecourse. I graduated by default to managing Plumpton and Fontwell. In truth, even though I loved the industry, I was lucky to fall into a career in racing.

“From there, I went into the London region of the Jockey Club, so Epsom, Kempton and Sandown, which included selling all the buses on a race day. I was promoted to looking after sales and PR for the courses and it was a case of just being in the industry, with new roles popping up.

“Racing is a sport watched by millions but the community within the sport is quite small, everybody knows each other. That is changing with new people coming into the industry, but we have been quite an insular sport. It is a challenge for racing to look at the big picture.”

After such a superb grounding in the sport, it was seemingly inevitable that Baker would take the next step into full-time management of a course.

His journey proves the potentially nomadic nature of racing but the final destination in this phase of his career took Baker to Aintree, and stewardship of the Grand National.

As he readily admits, it is a huge responsibility, with horse safety rightly now placed at the top of all considerations for racecourse managers, trainers, jockeys and the authorities.

“An opportunity came up at Worcester to be the racecourse manager, and having done that before, it was something I missed,” said Baker. “I was then headhunted to work at Bath Racecourse.

“A further opportunity came up to work at Carlisle in 2003, where I enjoyed some fantastic years. It is a nomadic existence at times, but there are a number of racecourses where people stay for a long time and settle down, such as Pat Masterson, my predecessor here at Newton Abbot.

“My perspective was to refresh things and try a new challenge, and I think people liked what I was doing at Carlisle, so I was offered a group role to oversee all the smaller courses.

“Again, I missed the day-to-day running of a course, and the role came up to manage the North-West region for the Jockey Club, which was primarily Aintree, but also Carlisle and Haydock.

“On my journey, starting in 1973 as a kid watching the Grand National, to then run the event was an absolute honour.

“At the time, we had lost two horses in the race over the previous two years, and it was front-page news that people wanted the National banned. My job was to confront that and say we were going to make changes to the race.

“You can never make the sport totally safe and before that, emphasis was shifted on to the BHA (British Horseracing Authority), but the public identify things with the racecourse.

“We changed the nature of the race by adapting the fences, shortening the course slightly and that involved a whole PR process of speaking to trainers and jockeys, so everyone was involved.

“The pressure of the Grand National is intense and, in my first year, 40 horses jumped Beechers Brook for the first time, and when the commentator said all 40 had cleared safely, there was a massive cheer from the crowd and a great moment for me.

“The year was 2013 and the race was won by 66/1 shot Auroras Encore. He wouldn’t get in the race now because it has been reduced to 34 runners, and he was number 35.

“We managed to grow the National by remembering it was the People’s Race; it belongs to them. We needed the people of Liverpool behind us to make them feel a part of the race.

“Ladies Day, for example, had become a bit tainted and crowds were lowering. I spoke to a hotelier in Liverpool, and he advised to speak with local people on their ideas. From those conversation, we grew back up to 50,000 fans on Ladies Day.”

Ideas and innovation are what Baker proposes for the future success of Newton Abbot Races.

We have the location, the facilities and the enthusiasm of the local community, now it is all about enhancing the race-day experience for visitors and exploring options to make Newton Abbot a unique racing venue.

“After seven years at Aintree, I had completed 30 years in racing and it was time for a break, do some travelling and be with the family,” added Baker.

“Covid then hit four weeks later, and I spent some time back in Cumbria doing something completely different, running harbours and car parks as part of the Whitehaven Commission. I loved that because it was about putting something back into the town of Whitehaven, which was quite deprived.

“After a period of time, I started to miss the daily buzz of racing and when the Newton Abbot opportunity arose, I just felt the place has so much potential.

“The location is amazing, the prize money is great, all the leading trainers speak very highly of the course. We have a great fixture list of racing through the summer, but it’s unique because it’s summer jumping, one of the few tracks offering that.

“This should be a 365-day venue through the year, so the excitement and challenge of taking this on was impossible to refuse. We have 40,000 racegoers during the year, and we want to increase that to 50 or 60.

“The facilities are amazing, we want to invest more into that, really compete with the best courses in the UK. It is a wonderful opportunity with huge potential.

“From a sporting perspective, we are lucky to have the support of leading trainers, and we do have really good prize money.

“Our job at Newton Abbot Racecourse is to match that with the facilities and the experience for people visiting our venue. The challenge is to put us on the map, to do things not already happening in the industry.”

The 2025 Racing Fixtures in Newton Abbot
April 10 – Family Day
April 19 – Easter Saturday Racing
May 7 – Midweek Racing
May 14 – Midweek Racing
May 28 – All About the Horse Family Day
June 4 – Midweek Racing
June 13 – Evening Racing
June 24 – Ladies Evening
July 4 – Friday Racing
July 14 – Monday Racing
July 20 – Family Day
August 21 – Family Day
August 30 – Saturday Racing
September 9 – Tuesday Racing
September 19 – Friday Racing
September 29 – Monday Racing
October 18 – Saturday Racing
October 29 – Family Day