WE are in the middle of a busy week for the racecourse teams at Chepstow and Ffos Las.

There was a race meeting at Ffos Las near Llanelli on Easter Sunday and then at Chepstow on Easter Monday. Both fixtures were blessed with lovely sunny weather which led to big attendances.

Both meetings were family race days and hundreds of children took advantage of the fact that under-17s go racing for free. As an industry, we are promoting this message heavily this year. There aren’t many sporting days out where children don’t pay to get into the venue.

There’s no rest for the Chepstow team with another fixture this Friday evening when local band Rusty Shackle are playing live after racing. We have been offering free admission for those people who book in advance and at the time of writing we have received more than 7000 tickets applications. It should be a great night.

Free admission closes at midnight on Wednesday but you can pay on the night with tickets just £10. Racing starts at 4.50pm and Rusty Shackle will be on stage around 8.15pm. They will play for around an hour and a quarter.

The meeting is sponsored by the Welsh company Dunraven Windows who have been long-serving supporters of the racecourse. The company founder is David Brace OBE who, as well as running a successful business, is a huge fan of horse racing, particularly point to point racing.

His grandson Connor is having a brilliant first season as a professional jockey and recently rode the winner of the Scottish Champion Hurdle, one of the big races of the year over jumps.

A Welsh trained racehorse making the headlines is the nine-year-old Tobefair. Last week he won a race at Cheltenham for his Carmarthenshire trainer Debra Hamer. The victory came just weeks after he had finished second in a race at the Cheltenham Festival.

It was his first victory since 2017 when he completed a sequence of seven wins on the trot. He’s an amazing horse owned by a syndicate of people who frequent the Cresselly Arms at Cresswell Quay in Pembrokeshire.

As a foal, Tobefair had been given to Michael Cole, a retired farmer, as a present. When it came to putting him into training, Cole ruefully accepted that he couldn’t afford it in full. Fortunately he found a number of people at the pub who were prepared to form a syndicate to buy him.

They called themselves the Down The Quay Club and can safely say they have had the racing journey of a lifetime.

It just proves that in jump racing, humble beginnings don’t necessarily prevent you playing, and winning in the big league.