One of our biggest meetings of the year takes place this Thursday 2nd June.
It’s Kaiser Chiefs Race Night with an expected attendance of more than 5000 to see the band play their biggest hits including I Predict A Riot, Ruby, Everyday I Love You Less And Less, Oh, My God and Everything Is Average Nowadays.
There are seven jump races from 5.15pm. The last race is off at 8.30pm and the band will be on stage around 8.45pm playing for an hour and 15 minutes. Tickets are available in advance and on the gate. For all the details of the event, please see the Ffos Las website.
Our race meeting on Saturday evening took place in glorious sunshine.
Five of the six runners in the second race, a 2m chase, were Welsh-trained. Boston Joe, having just his fifth run under Rules, was making his handicap debut for Rebecca Curtis (photographed). He made most of the running, jumping better than many of the others, and won by four lengths. Boston Joe is not thought to be a world-beater, but he will probably keep going through the summer and pick up more win and place prize money.
In the 2m3f chase Evan Williams’ Balkardy completed a hat-trick. It was a trappy four-runner event, and he appeared destined for second place approaching the final fence, when he was a length and a half down. Galvanised by Isabel Williams, he jumped it big and well, landed running and dashed past the leader so quickly that he was ultimately a convincing winner. Balkardy – who according to his jockey is “small, gutsy and likes a line of fences” – is only five, and it’s unusual for one so young to have won three handicap chases before the end of May.
One consequence of the fine evening was that the last three hurdle races had to be run without the three flights in the home straight, owing to the setting sun. Two of them were won by the two Nicky Henderson-Nico de Boinville runners on the card.
The weather was kind at Chepstow on Friday, when Monmouthshire’s Deborah Faulkner trained her first winner on the flat. Fossos took the five furlong handicap, which was the first leg of a treble for the in-demand seven-pound claimer Harry Davies. Fossos cost only 2,000 guineas in the autumn and showed promise when not beaten far last time over course and distance. He didn’t get a clear run then, but there were no such problems in Friday’s smaller field.
Davies was odds-on to make it a four-timer in the finale, but his mount was no match for Bernard Llewellyn’s Cogital. Ridden by the trainer’s grandson Jordan Williams, the seven-year-old was winning for the second time in six weeks, and in between those successes he wasn’t beaten far in a handicap at Ascot. He’s entered in an apprentices’ race at Goodwood on Friday. He’s now won six times for Bernard since being purchased out of the Amanda Perrett yard.
Sean Bowen travelled from Ffos Las up to Kelso on Sunday to ride two horses for Gordon Elliott. The first of them Ted Hastings finished second in the 2.12 race. Then Bowen had to wait until 5.40 for his other ride. Happily, Come On Du Berlais made it worthwhile, justifying odds of 8/11 to land the mares’ bumper. She travelled well and took the lead a quarter of a mile out, going on to win easily.
