Trainer Dai Burchell, 84, set to hang up his spurs next month
WELSH horse-racing will not be quite the same when Ebbw Vale’s Dai Burchell hands in his trainer’s licence on January 31.
Dai, who will be 85 in February, has not been in the best of health these past few years, and only with the help of his assistant trainer wife, Ruth, and award-winning stable staff – Katie Burchell, Jackie Jenkins, Lucy Ward and Jo Williams – has he been able to carry on sending out winners at racecourses up and down the country.
Dai was first granted a licence to train under Rules in 1983 and since then has saddled around 450 winners.
On one famous occasion in the 1980s he travelled to Perth in Scotland with four horses and won with three of them – Hot Company, Carrols Grove and Gay Ruffian. His other one, Sea Express, finished second at 8-1.
A little-known fact is that Dai once rode a winner, too – at his local racecourse, Chepstow, coming in at odds of 20-1.
In 2018 Dai received Welsh Horse Racing’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and little did I think that two years later yours truly would be the third winning recipient!
Dai’s favourite racecourses are Chepstow, Hereford and far-flung Cartmel, but it was at Southwell some years ago now that he sent three horses – Bold Pearl, Brown Rifle and John Feather – and all three caught the judge’s eye.
Back in 1958 when I visited a flapping (unlicensed) race meeting at Sophia Gardens in Cardiff, organised by the Society of Sportsmen (Wales) in aid of the Empire Games Fund, little did I know that a certain Dai Burchell, who won the Cardiff Racecourse Cup over a mile with Teddy Bear, would go on to much greater things in the world of horse-racing proper.
Meanwhile, congratulations to Osian Radford, 20, from Burry Port, Carmarthenshire, on landing his first winner on David Brace’ s Looksnowtlike brian in the club’s conditions race at the Barbury Racing Club Point-to-Point.
A 10-1 chance, the former inmate of Tim Vaughan’s yard won easily by 15 lengths from hot favourite Twig.
Welsh champion Bradley Gibbs, who now trains at Hatfield, also had a win on the strongly backed Honey I’m Good in the Jockey Club maiden race.
Welsh jockeys continue to boot home the winners.
At Plumpton, James Bowen scored on Hey Bob and Fairy Gem, while at Catterick his older brother, Sean, won on Brorson.
Also at Catterick, Jack Tudor booted home 16-1 chance Primal Focus for his boss, Christian Williams.
I have been informed that next year’s point-to-point steeplechases at Bonvilston in the Vale of Glamorgan could probably be the last to be held there. The reason being is that the farm will become a solar farm.
If this is true then it will be a sorry day for Welsh point-to-point racing.
We have already lost the highly praised Lower Machen course at Rudry and if Bonvilston is lost, too, it will be a blow to hunt-racing in Wales.
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