We have two race meetings in South Wales over the Jubilee Bank Holiday weekend.
It’s Kaiser Chiefs Race Night at Ffos Las near Llanelli on Thursday night with an expected attendance of more than 5000 to see the band play their biggest hits including I Predict A Riot, Ruby and Everyday I Love You Less And Less. There are seven jump races from 5.15pm. The last race is off at 8.30pm and the band will be on stage around 8.45pm.
On Saturday we have BBC Radio One presenter Chris Stark (photographed) playing DJ set after racing at Chepstow’s Jubilee Race Night. The first race is 5.30pm. Tickets are available in advance and on the gate for both fixtures.
The race meeting at Ffos Las on Saturday evening took place in glorious sunshine.
Five of the six runners in the second race, a 2m chase, were Welsh-trained. Boston Joe was making his handicap debut for Rebecca Curtis. He made most of the running, jumping better than many of the others, and won by four lengths.
In the 2m3f chase Evan Williams’ Balkardy completed a hat-trick. It was a trappy four-runner event, and he appeared destined for second place approaching the final fence but galvanised by Isabel Williams, he jumped it big and well, landed running and dashed past the leader so quickly that he was ultimately a convincing winner. Balkardy is only five and it’s unusual for one so young to have won three handicap chases before the end of May.
One consequence of the fine evening was that the last three hurdle races had to be run without the three flights in the home straight, owing to the setting sun. Two of them were won by the two Nicky Henderson-Nico de Boinville runners on the card.
The weather was kind at Chepstow on Friday, when Monmouthshire’s Deborah Faulkner trained her first winner on the flat. Fossos took the five furlong handicap, which was the first leg of a treble for the in-demand seven-pound claimer Harry Davies. Fossos cost only 2,000 guineas in the autumn.
Davies was odds-on to make it a four-timer in the finale, but his mount was no match for Bernard Llewellyn’s Cogital. Ridden by the trainer’s grandson Jordan Williams, the seven-year-old was winning for the second time in six weeks, and in between those successes he wasn’t beaten far in a handicap at Ascot. He’s now won six times for Bernard since being purchased out of the Amanda Perrett yard.
Sean Bowen travelled from Ffos Las up to Kelso on Sunday to ride two horses for Gordon Elliott. Ted Hastings finished second but Come On Du Berlais made the journey worthwhile, justifying odds of 8/11 to land the mares’ bumper.
