TRANSFORMED ASCOT

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 56, 3 September 1937, Page 13

TRANSFORMED ASCOT

SOLDIER'S ACHIEVEMENT

No more wonderful man of his gene-1 "ration .could be found than Lieuten-ant-Colonel Sir Gordon Carter, Secretary to the King's Representative at Ascot, and Clerk of the Course, states a writer in an English paper. Familiarly known as "Sir Troops," he began his career as a trooper in the Household Cavalry,, and he is now 84. It is as loiig ago as 1880 that he received his first commission in the Ist Life Guards. LIFE OF ADVENTURE. His was a lifo of adventure before he retired from the Service and settled down to the pleasant routine of managing Ascot. For he had served through the South African War, and then, with Admiral Palliser and Mr. Frank Brooke, accompanied Earl Fitzwilliam on the Veronique in search of the treasure that pirates are supposed to have buried in the Cocos Islands. It was a mission.that led to minor hostilities with a rival party that was also engaged in the. thrills of treasure hunting. As Colonel Carter, as he was then, took the reins at Ascot,, there was a slackness visible in most of the detail. This he proceeded to tighten up, bringing the -discipline of the Barracks Square at Windsor to the administration of the meeting. It was not long before his lightest .word became the law of the Heath. If he did not chasfise with scorpions he set going a routine that is as smooth and perfect as it could be, for Ascot is. a great organisation, and a vast amount of detail is involved in the preparations for the eventful four days' racing. MANY DIFFICULTIES. One of the first things he set himself to—and it was imperatively necessary—was the improvement of ' the state of the course itself: Perhaps his name will be best remembered for what he has done in this respect It was not that he made two blades of grass grow where one grew before He made grass grow where there had never been any. Those who remember tne aspect of the course in prewar days, with the expanse of bare yellow clay, baked bone-hard in dry weather, and the horses throwing up clouds of dust as they raced, and compare it with the fresh green sward of today, will have impressed on mm the change that has been made. The best horses in the world have raced at Ascot. They .had to run oh what was undoubtedly the worst surface of any racecourse in the kingdom. This work had been carried out in the face of difficulties that deterred all his predecessors as clerks of the course. It was a task at which a less resolute man would have quailed Ascot Heath has a barren and unresponsive soil that has answered only to the most intensive treatment.