CHEPSTOW: HOME OF WELSH RACING.

​I have in my small yet surprisingly sprawling library of racing books a small tome celebrating fifty years of racing at Chepstow. Since its publication Chepstow has enjoyed a further forty-two years as the heartbeat of Welsh racing and come 2025 it will be celebrating its hundredth anniversary. I hope they have something grand planned for the party.
Two facts that may be argued about but which I believe to be true are: the town of Chepstow is in Monmouthshire, yet for long periods of its history Chepstow was regarded as an English town and some inhabitants wish it were today. Also, during the 2nd World War, as a training exercise, the American Army volunteered to level the infield of the racecourse but were refused permission. I wonder how often that decision was regretted during the passing years?
Once upon a time Wales could boast racecourses at Brecon, Usk, Monmouth, Cardiff, Caerleon, Abergavenny and Tenby. Interestingly, in regard to my comment about whether Chepstow is truly Welsh or a little bit English, a Master of the Monmouthshire Hounds, Reggie Herbert, wrote. ‘the racing at Monmouth was a good deal better class than at the Welsh gatherings..’
In those days Cardiff was the supreme racecourse in Wales and it is where the Welsh Grand National was inaugurated, beginning life in 1877 as a Hunters Steeplechase before transforming into the Grand National Hunt Steeplechase in 1889, carrying the not insignificant prize fund of four-hundred and fifty sovereigns.
What is surprising about racing today at Chepstow is that the name of Walter Smedley is not celebrated in the manner of a founding father. Without him it is more than possible that Chepstow would not exist as without his unfailing enthusiasm the racecourse, than called St.Arvans, would not have been constructed. Smedley’s love of horse racing could not be contained at solely at St.Arvans and he went on to be responsible for racecourses coming into existence at Bromyard, Devon & Exeter, Hereford and Carmarthen to name but a few.
In 1891 Smedley had the good fortune to marry Mabel Williams and as a wedding present Henry Clay, owner of the land that now comprises Chepstow racecourse, gave the couple as a wedding present a house, Oakgrove, and the surrounding parkland. Colin Davies, trainer of three-time Champion Hurdler, Persian War, trained from Oakgrove during the time of Chepstow’s fifty-year anniversary. Smedley immediately recognised the potential of the land surrounding his new home and with Henry Clay’s permission and support began to lay down the racecourse, the precursor of Chepstow.
Yet for all of Smedley’s life, and beyond the end of the 1st World War, St.Arvans was second-best to Cardiff, a situation only righted when Henry Hastings Clay, son of the man who gifted Oakgrove to Smedley, formed with other local dignitaries, the Chepstow Racecourse Company. Surprisingly, though not so surprising to any historian, Chepstow was not a rip-roaring success from the get-go despite the enthusiasm of the Board of Directors for the project. Chepstow was a long way from any of the training centres, a long way from anywhere substantial, and there was no easy access across the Severn in those days, added to which the racecourse was proposed at a period of financial decline which resulted in a poor take-up of shares and the Board of Directors were forced to prove their optimism by taking up the slack.
If the grass grows well on the racecourse today it might be due to the sweat from the brows of those seventy or so men who dug out the course by hand during that hot summer of 1925, the only mechanical devise given to the gangs of men being an old steam navvy which ran on rails and removed the soil hacked out with picks and shovels.
Although Chepstow is more synonymous with National Hunt than flat racing it can be argued that its most significant contribution to racing was that it was the venue for Sir Gordon Richards breaking the world record for a jockey when he won twelve consecutive races over a two-day meeting. He was only beaten narrowly in the final race, so the record might have been thirteen, and Doug Smith, responsible for the heinous crime, his bus-ride to the railway station the most harrowing journey he ever undertook, apparently.
Over the years some of National Hunt’s best horses have won races at Chepstow – Pendil, Killiney, Persian War, Bula, Comedy of Errors, to name but five – and the Welsh Grand National remains a highlight of both the season and the Christmas festivities. Yet to my mind Chepstow is an under-used and under-valued racecourse. It is as good a racecourse as we have in this country and should stage better quality racing than it is allowed. It is in a beautiful location for a sport born and bred in rural settings and could and should stage more evening racing during the summer months. It should also be a Saturday racecourse and be seen more than once a year on terrestrial television. And to commemorate the soon-to-be hundredth anniversary perhaps they should revive races like the Welsh Derby, Welsh Cesarewitch and Monmouthshire Handicap and Stewards Cup and have a mini Welsh Royal Ascot and stage a good quality race in memory of Walter Smedley, its founding father.