Newmarket stablelass Joanna goes the extra mile to ensure her colleagues stay safe from the invisible threat of coronavirus
A Newmarket stablelass has been using her skill with needle and thread to help keep her work colleagues safe from the invisible threat of coronavirus.
Joanna Lacisz, who works at leading trainer Sir Michael Stoute’s Beech Hurst yard, has spent hours making more than 150 face coverings since the start of lockdown, using donated material in a variety of patterns and colours.
“When the coronavirus outbreak started, I saw so many people helping each other and I thought this is something I can do in my community to help people feel safe,” said Joanna, who first learned to sew with her mother when she was a little girl back in Poland.
Up until March this year, she had been taking courses at the Oakington-based Cambridge Sewing but, like many other hobbies and pastimes, the needlework lessons closed down under Covid rules.
Joanna’s hard work has been appreciated by her colleagues, among them travelling head lad Steven Eastwood, who said: “I am using the face coverings to travel to and from race meetings and while I am there. They are very comfortable and easy to breathe through.
“My wife has also been using them at work to help protect herself and a lot of people have commented how good they look.”
Joanna, 32, came to England in January in January 2017 after working in horseracing in Poland. In her first season she put her name down to look after a colt which had arrived from Prince Khalid Abdullah’s Juddmonte Farms and which no-one else in the yard wanted.
Named Expert Eye, he won valuable races in this country before going on to take the 2018 Breeders’ Cup Mile, a triumph Joanna witnessed at first hand when she accompanied ‘her’ horse to Churchill Downs in Kentucky, USA.
It is not just her mask-making which has been appreciated at Beech Hurst. Joanna has been nominated for one of this year’s prestigious Godolphin Stud and Stable staff awards and has made it to the shortlist of 11 nominees in the rider/groom category. She is currently undergoing interviews with the judges who will announce the names of the three finalists in each of the six sections in the New Year ahead of an interactive award ceremony on February 22.
“Whatever happens from here, I felt very honoured and appreciated to be nominated. Anything that comes on top is just a bonus,” said Joanna.
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