Lycetts Team Champion Award

The National Trainers Federation (NTF) and Lycetts have joined forces to launch the Lycetts Team Champion Award. The new award championing exemplary training yards provides racehorse trainers and stable staff with the chance of winning a £4,000 cash prize. Nominations are now open and entrants have until 1^st December to enter.

There are two categories in the Lycetts Team Champion Award. One for training yards with less than 40 horses and the other for 40 horses or more. The winners of each will receive a £4,000 prize to go towards enhancing their teams.

Piers Plunket Associate Director at Lycetts, says: ‘Racehorse trainers and their staff make a great contribution to the world of British horseracing and we want to shine a spotlight on all the hard work that is carried out on these yards.

‘Our mission is to instil a sense of achievement in the best managed yards, as well as showcase the positive results of developing a team that works well together. In addition, we see the award as the perfect way of raising awareness of safe working practices to help reduce the risk of workplace injuries.’

Entries for the Lycetts Team Champion Award will be judged on the principles of The Winning Approach, a new industry standard to assist trainers in attracting and retaining valuable staff. The standard provides guidance in several areas, including effective recruitment and induction systems, safe and positive working environments, development and training, and reward and recognition.

NTF is helping its members meet the award criteria – and adopt the wider Winning Approach – by putting on a series of training days. Peplow Group’s Peter Burnet, who has run the Management Academy for Racing for the past decade, will be delivering a module entitled ‘Building a Sustainable Business’ to trainers and senior staff.

The training days, which have been funded by The Racing Foundation, will take place in Newmarket on October 26, Lambourn on November 2 and Middleham on November 21.

Rupert Arnold, Chief Executive of NTF, says: ‘We want to recognise how trainers and their staff acting as a team develop the foundations for a successful racing stable.  It has become the norm for trainers to acknowledge the team effort that brings success on the racecourse. Team Champion aims to identify the building blocks of that team success, encourage wider adoption of those ways of working and celebrate the stables that do it well.’

Winners of the Lycetts Team Champion Award will be announced at the NTF’s Annual General Meeting on Thursday 22^nd February 2018.  Entry forms are available from racehorsetrainers.org and lycetts.co.uk.