RACING
PUNTERS LOVE FIRST TIME AT LAS
Plunkett wins the first race at Ffos Las
By Rolf Johnson
The gates of Ffos Las, first new turf course in Britain for nearly a century, opened over five hours before last night’s first race.
The course was soon swarming with people; if the Welsh (and the visitors from over the Severn Bridge) keep turning up in such droves (estimates around 10,000) the track’s future is secure.
Ffos Las (Blue Ditch) is a phoenix risen from the ashes of a disused mine. The Welsh Dragon, otherwise known as Dai Walters, has breathed fiery life into a rolling, spectacular landscape.
It was Walters’ dream, his money and his bulldozers which gouged this flattest of tracks out of a Welsh hillside.
It is a world away from Ascot’s exclusive afternoon finery.
No red carpets but, this was “first night, Welsh Valleys style”.
Tenor Wynne evans sang the Welsh National Anthem and then we looked to Walters’s Ffos Las Diamond to kick off proceedings with a long-planned victory in the opening novices’ hurdle.
It did not happen though the winner, Plunkett, is trained by evan Williams at nearby Llancarfan for hywel Jones – no doubts about their nationality.
“Hywel asked me to get him a horse for this,” said Williams.
“The credit must go to Michael hourigan, who trained him and sold him to me a few weeks ago.”
The second race went to Irish raider Turf War – trained by the same Michael hourigan from whom Plunkett was bought.
By the time Tony McCoy won the third race on Sea Wall, the show was creaking to keep matters under control and the facilities just about enough to keep everyone happy – a brisk wind was blowing the froth off plastic pints but keeping the temperature down as the masses struggled to get bets on.
It will not always be like this but the strength of support was encouraging Ffos Las is a great galloping track whose first flat meeting is on July 21st, but its immediate ambitions lie over jumps.
The last Welsh course to close was Newport in 1948, which held the Welsh National and Welsh
Champion hurdle.
Though the National is firmly entrenched at Chepstow, the hurdle is a prize within Ffos Las’s grasp, and like the new course, champion.
