Stag parties, students and a lost Japanese tourist – but has this Salisbury music night got any of them hooked on racing?

Over at the betting ring the members of a stag party in their unmissable novelty shirts are planning their first punt. A group of university students are heading towards one of the bars, where some glammed-up young women pass by in the opposite direction, glasses of rose in hand. Two middle-aged pals are on the rail, sipping at their Guinnesses, chatting the night away. 

Amidst the revelry sits a lone Japanese tourist at the foot of the grandstand. What has brought him to Salisbury on this beautiful late summer Friday evening for a racenight whose primary draw is the Britpop tribute act playing after racing rather than the preceding series of Class 4, 5 and 6 handicaps? An Oasis or Blur superfan perhaps? Not quite.

“I was trying to get on a bus for Stonehenge and accidentally rode on the free bus that came here,” Maiki reveals, “but I really like horseracing so I decided to just stay.