Back in 2006, a few of us led by Derek Lucie-Smith, had the idea of pulling the property industry together for a mid-summer day at the races to help raise a few quid for charity. The Property Race Day was becoming a reality and the only missing link to help give us some cred was a proper fun-loving property grandee with a real interest in theSport of Kings and a big Charity slant, applications on a post card please!

We all knew there could only be one candidate, Michael Eric Slade, Captain Cool at Helical PLC, and thankfully he jumped at the chance to become the President of Property Race Day at the outset. Helical were signed up as our first sponsor, he had already signed me up as a LandAid advocate by that stage so they were made a founding beneficiary ( which I am pleased to say they still are to this day, having benefitted to the tune of over £1m from PRD ). It turned out we had signed the services of the most wonderful ambassador for our event. I suppose these days he’d be described as an influencer and, boy, did he do some influencing, helping us with attracting sponsors and guests to our early events at Sandown before we made the switch to Ascot in 2010. The only scary bit of having Mike so closely aligned with the event was the genuine fear of what he might say to our lunch guests when he had charge of the microphone for a few minutes each year – those of you who were there will know what I mean. Thankfully social media wasn’t a thing back then and we kept the audience to the 950 diners who were in the room! 

Mike, Heather and Helical were the best supporters we could have found and the growth of the event, which has now distributed over £3.5m to charitable causes, was very much helped on its way by the Slade energy, humour and bonhomie which everyone has recognised and shared in the past week since we lost an industry legend. I was lucky to have witnessed much of that from a nearby seat and from myself as President, James Aumonier as Chairman and all of us at PRD we wanted to acknowledge Mike’s contribution to our event and to pass our warm condolences to Heather, Katie, Max, Hugo and their families.

The Property Race Day Committee