PLUNKETT: THE HORSE WHO GOT IT STARTED AT FFOS LAS
PLUNKETT will always hold a special place in Ffos Las folklore.
As racehorses go, he was fairly unremarkable. In a 26-race career, spent mostly at Britain’s quieter tracks, he won four times.
But it was one of those victories, achieved on June 18, 2009, which kick-started the Ffos Las story.
Plunkett lined up for the freebets. co.uk novices’ hurdle, the first race ever staged at the Gwendraeth Valley venue, as the 15-8 second favourite. Four minutes and 40 seconds later he was storming home seven lengths clear of Older and Wiser.
The 6-4 favourite was Ffos Las Diamond, owned by course supremo Dai Walters and a horse who, you’d imagine, had been targeted at the race. But he could only trail home a well-beaten fifth.
And so the tale began, with a crowd approaching 10,000 cheering it on from the sidelines.
Plunkett’s trainer, Evan Williams, soon doubled up courtesy of Danehill Willy in the novices’ chase. But opening night belonged to Tony McCoy.
It should not come as a surprise. Most race meetings in that particular era belonged to the most successful jump jockey of all time, a man who ultimately became known as simply AP .
He rode a treble that night, with his win on board Danehill Willy sandwiched between victories on Sea Wall and Nostringsattached.
It was a seriously good night, with the people of West Wales welcoming a new arrival and the weather gods doing their bit by bathing the course in midsummer sunshine.
Long after the horse passing the post in last place in the final race of the day had brought sunset on its tail, vehicles were still banked deep in the car park as they queued to get out.
In its own way, that helps underline what a special evening it was.
The 10,000 or so who crammed into Ffos Las that night has never been equalled, though there was a bumper turnout for a Friday meeting when the legendary Peter O’Sullevan officially opened the course, while around 8,000 were there last month when Madness performed a set after racing.
But that in no way detracts from the impact Ffos Las has made.
To start with, it has transformed the whole appearance of the venue which sits on land between Trimsaran and Carway. The racecourse was built on the site of a former opencast mine, one of Europe’s deepest from which millions of tonnes of coal were extracted.
It was Walters who was behind its conversion to a dual-purpose track, one capable of staging both flat and jump meetings.
And it has given the area a foothold on the national sporting stage, one which had previously been the exclusive domain of the Scarlets.
It has also breathed fresh impetus into the Welsh racing scene. There was room for Ffos Las, what with Chepstow being 80-odd miles up the M4 overlooking the Severn Bridge and Bangor-on-Dee fulfilling its duties in North Wales.
Walters wasted no time in bringing back to life the Welsh Champion Hurdle, a race with a rich history but which had been mothballed at Chepstow since 2002.
There was also talk of making a play for the Welsh Grand National, but in truth that always looked a step too far.
And then there’s the rising tide of the Welsh over the past decade, particularly in the National Hunt game. Williams and Peter Bowen, who have
saddled more winners at Ffos Las than any other trainers, are now serious players on the big stage.
Bowen’s sons, Sean and James, are established among the top 10 riders in Britain, with many experts predicting a jockeys’ title will be heading its way to one – or both – in the next few seasons.
Is it a coincidence that this has happened since Ffos Las first opened its doors? Maybe. Maybe not.
Of course there have been some low points along the way. There can be some wretchedly heavy going at Ffos Las, with the West Wales climate determining that the course suffers more rainfall than any other track in Britain.
As McCoy once said: “There’s soft, and then there’s Ffos Las soft.”
And at no time was this better illustrated than in a gruelling renewal of the West Wales National in 2015. Only two of the 10 starters completed the course as the deep going took its toll. And welfare questions were asked when the runner-up, Gorgehous Lliege, returned to jump the last fence despite having appeared to be pulled up.
But the ups far outnumber the downs.
On its roll of honour, Ffos Las can claim to have played host to Sprinter Sacre – one of the finest National Hunt horses of this or any other time–- in one of his early outings.
Oscar Whisky, owned by Walters and one of the most versatile hurdlers of recent years, took the Welsh Champion Hurdle in 2011. Another winner of that race is the top-class The New One.
And in the autumn of 2016, Might Bite and Defi Du Seuil – seriously talented horses who went on to win top-level races at the Cheltenham Festival and the Grand National meeting just months later – both had their first outings of the season there.
It’s proof that the country’s top trainers believe it is a fair track. Otherwise, there’s no way they’d run their best horses there.
Keith Ottesen, a former Ffos Las clerk of the course, held a soft spot for the track. And at one pre-Christmas meeting, deep in the heart of December, he stood outside the jockeys’ weighing room long after racing had ended and gazed at the sun setting towards the west of the valley.
“Look at that,” he said. “Who wouldn’t want to come here?”