James is in the running for BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year
THE 43rd Timeform jumps annual, regarded at the definitive record of the winter game is lavishly illustrated and is a monumental work that runs to 1,024 pages.
Chasers & Hurdlers 2017/18 is a thoroughly comprehensive record of Britain’s steeplechasers and hurdlers, with succinct note-form comments on more than 8,500 horses that ran over jumps last season.
One Welsh rider who comes in for a lot of praise is Pembrokeshire’s James Bowen aged just 16 when he won the Welsh Grand National on 13-year-old Raz De Maree.
James went on to win the conditional jockeys’ championship riding 58 winners while his brother Sean finished seventh in the leading jockeys’ table booting home 82 winners from 482 rides.
James is based with top trainer Nicky Henderson and the good news is that he is in the running for the BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year, an award that has been won in the past by Andy Murray, Tom Daley and Wayne Rooney.
James said: “It’s exciting news, if I can do as well as some of those who’ve won in the past I’ll be happy.
“I’ve had plenty of people supporting me, like my dad and Mr Henderson and all the other trainers that have given me rides and contributed to my great season.
“Turf Talk has been singing the praises of this talented young rider and his brother long before the national press got wind of them.
Meanwhile, Chasers & Hurdlers informs us that champion Richard Johnson topped the list of winning riders with 176 wins from 901 rides.
As for the leading trainers, the only Wales based trainer who made it in the top dozen prize money wise was Vale of Glamorgan’s Evan Williams, a former national champion point-topoint rider, who during the season saddled 52 winners which won £730,488 in prize money.
Top of the list was Nicky Hendersen who won 141 races with 85 horses which won £3,376,169 for his owners while Crickhowell-born Nigel Twiston-Davies made it to fourth place winning 80 races and £,807,755.
As usual, the better horses receive extended entries or write-up’s and Joe Farrell which won the Scottish Grand National for Pembrokeshire’s Rebecca Curtis is one of them.
We learn that: “Joe Farrell’s victory went some way to rescuing a poor season for trainer Rebecca Curtis who had seen her string struggle to find its form and her stable strength fell from around fifty to just twenty (she had also endured turmoil in her private life).”
Incidentally, two other horses actually trained in Wales to have won the Scottish Grand National are Peter Bowen’s Al Co (2014) and Tim Vaughan’s Beshabar (2011).
We also learn that Rebecca who once trained point-to-pointers has been training for ten years and was in the winner’s enclosure at the Cheltenham Festival four years in a row from 2012, with Teaforthree, At Fishers Cross, O’Faolins Boy and Irish Cavalier.
I cannot think of any other Wales based trainer who has even come close to achieving that feat apart from Colin Davies who won three successive Champion Hurdles in 1968,1969 and 1970 with the great Persian War. I believe he had another horse which won at the Cheltenham festival called Dulwich.
Evan Williams’s enigmatic Buywise we are informed has built up a cult following and must have cost his legion of followers a small fortune with his series of near misses. In the words of his trainer.
“He’s a tough old devil and his fans often send letters and e-mails with advice about how he should be ridden. Usually telling us that we’re doing it wrong.’’ says Evan whose great ambition is to train a Grand National winner.
Williams was one of three Welsh trainers who saddled winners at Hereford races last Tuesday. His sixyear-old Marble Moon , partnered by stable jockey Adam Wedge, made all to win the Harrison.
Clark’s Rickerby Handicap Hurdle by three parts of a length from Some Kinda Lama. An odds-on favourite Marble Moon was winning for the fourth time in a row.
Bargoed’s Bernard Llewellyn saw his eight-year-old Arty Campbell land the EquestrianProjects.Co.UK
Handicap Hurdle under champion jockey Richard Johnson and Pembrokeshire’s Rebecca Curtis too the EquestrianProjects For Gallops Chase with Drovers Lane at six the youngest of the five runners in the race. Drovers Lane won by nine lengths from the odds-on Cresswell Legend and was ridden by A P Heskin.
Vale of Glamorgan trainer Evan Williams was delighted when he saddled the winner of the first Dunraven Group Welsh Champion Hurdle at Ffos Las last Saturday.
His grey Silver Streak at five , the youngest of the eight runners in the race, won by three lengths from the Paul Nicholls trained Le Prezien.
Williams said: “I’m absolutely delighted. It is a surprise in as much as they are very good horses we were taking on today.
Yes, our horse is young and progressive-but you never underestimate the quality of the opposition there.
“To win means a lot to us. At the end of the day, he’s won a Swinton Hurdle and a Welsh Champion Hurdle. We’ll enjoy what we’ve done and see where we end up.’’
Silver Streak went off the 3-1 jointfavourite.
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