BRIAN’S BLAST FROM THE PAST

Writing in the Western Mail’s sister paper, the South Wales Echo on December 27, 1984, and under the heading ‘Bookie basher Dai has eye for winners’, I wrote...

The last place you would expect to find horses being trained is on the slag-heaps at Ebbw Vale.

Yet former steelworker Dai Burchell is doing exactly that with great success.

Already this jumping season, Dai has saddled five winners from his team of 11 horses.

His latest, just before Christmas, was Hereford winner Chummy’s Boy, who scored at odds of 10-1.

A week earlier he sent two horses – Bold Roderick and Cassio Lil to Haydock Park and they both scored at 12-1 and 7-1, respectively.

Scores of Dai’s followers backed these two in £5 and £10 doubles in betting shops in the Cardiff and Valleys areas and were rewarded with a 103-1 double.

Another long-priced winner for Dai this season was Kilsyth, which romped home at Newton Abbot at 14-1.

No wonder Dai isn’t very popular with betting shop proprietors in the Valleys at the moment!

Bookie-basher Dai, despite his non-horsey upbringing, has a sharp eye when it comes to spotting future winners. He paid just 425 guineas for Chummy’s Boy.

And last season Brown Rifle, who he bought for 625 guineas, won for him at Stratford and Taunton and was later valued at £15,000 – an amount of money larger than his golden handshake he received after 25 years of watching sheets of metal slide by at the Ebbw Vale steelworks.

You won’t find any lords or sirs among the owners that Dai trains for.

But you might find a policeman, a solicitor, a civil servant and a bookmaker.

Dai has gone on record as saying that every time one of his horses goes to the races it is a trier.

With his record you would not dare doubt him. And what is the secret of his success?

It’s running his horses up and down those grassy slag heaps, of course.