FOUND : ONE RACECOURSE. ANSWERS TO THE NAME OF....

Call off the dogs, look what’s been found hidden in the undergrowth! As the delays to the opening of Great Leighs continue to try the patience of even the most ardent proponents of both all-weather racing and the need to bring Rules racing to Essex, news reached the Racing Post last weekend of the current state of progress on a project that has been even longer in the making than the aforementioned venue.

The racecourse being built at Ffos Las near Llanelli at present represents the second attempt by Pembrey Racecourse PLC to establish a new Rules racecourse in Carmarthenshire, and with it become the first such venue in the locality since the - by then corruption-sullied - Tenby track closed its doors this month in 1936 (Chris Pitt’s peerless A Long Time Gone survey will tell you the whole sorry tale there).

As the name of the holding company suggests, Pembrey itself was the intended venue of the course when BHA fixtures were secured by the nascent PLC (Pembrey Racing Ltd as was) in the summer of 2000, before matters of land ownership and the risk of flooding forced it to look elsewhere, settling on the site of a former mine in Ffos Las three miles further inland. This has inevitably delayed matters, the overoptimistic claims of certain local councillors at the time that a course only finally granted planning permission in late summer 2003 would be built from scratch and functional within two years having proven wide of the mark. Judged on the aerial shot of the site in the Post, however, the revised projected date of 2009 does not look implausible.

In scrutinising the current surface in one of its essays, the new edition of Timeform’s Chasers and Hurdlers (meditations on which shall feature on this blog in due course) noted that the original racing turf at Ascot was given six years to bed in before any competitive racing took place on it. Ffos Las will only get a couple if all runs to time hereafter, but the ground has already seeded staggeringly well given that particular process only started last month. The Post’s photo indicates a covering of grass on around half of the course already, with a full growth now more than cautiously anticipated before the winter kicks in.

And for those who don’t already know or did not see the picture, that represents an awful lot of grass. No tight, sharp gaffe in the making, the turf courses at Ffos Las at least look a galloping horse’s dream – the circuit is basically flat, left-handed, 1m5f in length and with sweeping turns – and wide with it, provision evidently existing for maximum fields of 20 on both the hurdles and chase courses. Think Ayr, Doncaster, Newbury, Worcester or Wetherby for the closest points of reference.

Quite what else will be provided is a little more conjectural, as separate Pembrey Airport and Ffos Las Racecourse websites (both seemingly live) promise different versions of the finished product – the former, for example, maintains that an all-weather track will run around the outside of the turf circuit. If that is true, that would offer something to the genuine long-striding type on an artificial surface for the first time in this country, as well as realistically doubling the options of all-weather campaigners from Ireland (alongside Dundalk); but that still rates something of a major "if".

The importance of the potential Irish patronage alluded to there is not to be underestimated. More so than most other tracks in Britain, if not all of them, Ffos Las is superbly appointed to encourage raiders from across the sea given the aforementioned ferry links (plus the airport if permitted), and neither website wastes the opportunity to hammer home that point. Pre-emptively, this writer suggests that the paucity of Irish runners at Chepstow, the nearest Rules track to Ffos Las, cannot be held as an indication that the anticipated support will not materialise, given the Monmouthshire track is another 86 miles further east, another two unappealing hours away in a horsebox.

Then of course there is the matter of support from the local Rules trainers, and as South Wales continues to flourish as a hotbed of (comparatively) recently-established talent, from Peter Bowen and Evan Williams to Alison Thorpe, Keith Goldsworthy and Tim Vaughan, it will be interesting to see whether the availability of the new course on their doorsteps encourages more of the area’s many point-to-point handlers to take out a permit at least. The bountiful numbers of local runners in its pointing meetings season-long offer some grounds for optimism on that score.

Other than those already mentioned, there are numerous other “what if”s and as-yet unresolved or contentious issues associated with the project. The intended developing of the course as Wales’ centre of excellence for harness racing, polo and equestrianism looks a smart move towards ensuring usage of the site above and beyond Rules racedays, but the organisers of the well-established local point-to-point courses at Cilwendeg (since 2002), Erw Lon (1979), Llanvapley (1953), Trecoed (2002) and in particular the visually stunning peninsula course at Lydstep (1948), could all feasibly stand in the way of the course’s efforts to become the definitive local venue for the amateur sport by staying put.

Remember that, with the exception of Fakenham and few if any others, point-to-point meetings at Rules tracks doubling up as pointing venues tend to be characterless affairs not wholly appreciated by the cognoscenti, and the Ffos Las executive could lose a deal of goodwill if trying to bring too much pressure to bear on the local hunts to move to hosting such meets.

Another interesting imponderable will be how the respective Ffos Las and Chepstow executives respond to the challenge of incorporating all the meetings allocated to both (plus any successfully bid for) in a way that benefits them the most. Chepstow has 29 fixtures a year to program in, and as both courses are dual-purpose owing to it being an absolute prerequisite of the Ffos Las bid to be so, there was never really going to be the option there to put forward the new racecourse as, say, a summer jumping venue when the former is well into its Flat season.

Further, as galloping left-handers the two courses are not at all dissimilar (Chepstow’s undulations being the major distinguishing feature). There would be a degree of danger, therefore, in running a meeting at each track on consecutive days, and assuming that the pool of horses who can get to either one and are suited by their composition won’t be split between them to the possible detriment of both.

This is not to give an early bath to Ffos Las’s aspirations of being successful and as far as possible commercially viable from the start. Far from it – none of the points of contention raised above would rate as even halfway insurmountable in this writer’s opinion, and indeed things could get better still if the upgrading of the main link road to the site from the east is finished in time, as is the hope. With the right care and attention taken, the racing world will hopefully have cause to regard Ffos Las racecourse as an important addition to the broad church of racing provision in Britain (and Ireland), rather than some new oddment in one of its furthest-flung corners. It deserves to succeed.