A trainer with a love of racing in his blood
Today’s Turf Talk Questionnaire guest is Wyn Morris, whose love of horses started at a very young age. Wyn lived close to Dewi Lewis’ Pantycaws Stud Farm, so has been around horses all his life.
He says: “I took a lot of Tuesdays off school to go hunting and my parents didn’t know, as I would get on the school bus and hop off down the road.’’
When Wyn finished school he went to work on the stud farm, looking after the show horses and pointto-pointers. He later did some bar work, which he says was “great but I hated driving to work and passing horse lorries going racing or to shows, so I decided to go back to horses’.’
He started with Jennifer Watts, who had a lot of success with her point-to-pointers and show horses, and later he went to work for the Coakham Bloodhounds pack in Sussex, which he says “was just great as we hunted with foxhounds during the week and bloodhounds on the weekends’.’
Returning to Pembrokshire after some time, he went to work for Cynthia Higgon, who had some wonderful point-to-pointers, show horses and hunters.
He says: “This is when I realised I didn’t want to do anything else other than show horses and train point-topointers, so I went self-employed and the rest, as they say, is history.’’
Q. Where were you born?
A. I was born in Glangwilly Hospital a long time ago.
Q. How did you become involved in horse-racing?
A. The farm next door had point-topointers.
Q. What was your most exciting racing moment?
A. When we took Grey Kid to race in a Hereford hunter chase and he won at long odds.
Q. Which are your favourite racecourses?
A. I really don’t dislike any racecourses, for as the saying goes, “horses for courses”. The question is, will the course be suitable for your particular horse?
Q. Have you any pet racing hates?
A. Well, I have a few but the main one is to do with the way horses are turned out – where people don’t pull manes and leave their horses’ tails too long.
Q. Who do you admire most in horse-racing?
A. You have to admire everyone involved in the sport, especially the unsung heroes like the stable staff and owners, as without these people there would be no horse-racing.
Q. What is your favourite sport outside of horse-racing?
A. That’s easy! Hunting. But I am disappointed that the British Horse Racing Association seem to be moving point-to-point racing away from hunting. After all, this is where it started and should stay as an amature sport. It’s quite disappointing for hunt-racing to be competing against professional trainers.
Q. Which two people would you like to be seated next to at a dinner party?
A. That’s a difficult one. The legendary Sir AP McCoy for his knowledge of horses and racing, and Clarissa Dickson Wright for her food and love of country sports.
Q. Do you have a favourite book?
A. Not really, other than the sales catalogues from Brightwell & Tattersalls.
Q. What is your favourite television programme?
A. Gogglebox and Bake Off.
Q. Do you have a favourite singer?
A. Adele and, of course, Tom Jones. Q. What is the best advice you have ever received?
A. When I first went as joint-master with the Pembrokeshire, I was told by the senior master to always go with your gut instinct and have found that is true with every situation in life.
Q. Finally, tell us something about yourself that might surprise us.
A. I don’t think there is anything about me that would surprise anyone as I wear my heart on my sleeve. What you see is what you get.
■ Meanwhile, on February 28 at Ffos Las Racecourse, there will be a Cheltenham Festival Preview evening with special guests Tim Vaughan, Christian Williams, Sean Bowen and Cardiff bookmaker James Lovell. The event will be hosted by Dai Jones, trainee clerk of the Ffos Las course.
Tickets costs £12 and will include a drink on arrival and a pie and mash supper. For more information and tickets, phone 01554 811092.
■ The Curre & Llangibby Hunt Point-To-Point Steeplechases take place at Howick near Chepstow on February 17. The first race is at noon.
■ There are not many books about horse-racing in Wales and Robin Campbell’s All Bets Are Off: HorseRacing In Swansea, which was published by Gomer Press in 2004, is well worth a read.
We learn that most of the early horse-racing at Swansea, that took place either on the Crymlyn Burrows or at Clyne Valley, had been of the “flat” variety and that a hurdle race had taken place on the Burrows as early as 1837.
Some 25,000 racegoers passed through the turnstiles at the inaugural Manselton meeting and Grand National heroes such as Thomas Pickernell and William Archer travelled to Wales to ride in the races.
■ Email your racing stories and pictures to brianlee4@virginmedia.com or phone 029 2073 6438.