#GLW002* - DONKEY WOLLOPPING IN THE WELSH NATIONAL @ CHEPSTOW
Dick Francis’ sons mark 60th anniversary of Welsh race win
Dec 27 2009 by Clare Hutchinson, Wales On Sunday
DICK Francis still remembers how he surged ahead at the 13th fence on his horse, Fighting Line, to win the first Welsh Grand National to be held at Chepstow.
Dick Francis on his mount Fighting Line
on which he won the first Welsh Grand National
Held at Chepstow, as Wales has no
Race Course of stature.
Thus it makes use of the Monmouthshire Course!
Sixty years to the day, his sons will be turf-side tomorrow to mark the anniversary of the horseman-turned-author’s famous victory.
After winning the Welsh National, Lawrenny-born Francis went on to become champion jockey in 1953-54 before he turned his hand to thriller writing, producing 41 novels and topping the bestseller lists.
The 89 year old, who has suffered from three years of ill-health with major heart surgery and a leg amputation, now lives in the Cayman Islands.
His son Felix now co-authors his father’s best-selling equestrian thrillers, the latest of which he is still working on.
And tomorrow he will be at the biggest race of the Welsh calendar with his brother, Merrick, who runs the UK’s largest racehorse transfer business.
“I wasn’t born until four years after my father won that race, but I think it was quite a big deal for him,” said Felix.
“He won it again in 1956 on Crudwell and I remember that very well because all my life on his mantelpiece was a clock given to him by the horse’s owner, a Mrs Cooper, with one of the horse shoes that he wore in the race on the front of it.”
For Dick Francis, horse racing was the family business. His father Vincent, who was an amateur jockey, took part in the Welsh National when it was held in Cardiff and his grandfather was also an amateur jockey.
“Obviously it is his life,” said Felix, speaking from Surrey where he was spending Christmas with his family.
“When he was young he was a bit of a child prodigy of a horseman. His dad was a horse dealer – a bit like a car dealer now – and my father would travel around the country taking part in horse shows and posting his trophies home as he went.
“He was 18 and looking into becoming a jockey when war broke out, and when he was 19 he joined the RAF and was posted to north Africa.”
After racking up an impressive collection of war medals flying Spitfires and Lancaster Bombers, Francis left the RAF when the war ended to go back to his original dream of riding race winners.
Three years later, he won the Welsh National on Fighting Life.
The “big race” said Felix, was in 1956, when Francis rode the Queen Mother’s horse, Devon Loch, in the Grand National. His fame spread worldwide when the horse tripped just yards from the finish line, sending Francis sprawling and losing him that year’s title.
“That race dominated his whole life after that,” said Felix. “It took my father’s name from the back pages to the front pages and when he retired from racing the following year everyone was asking him what he was going to do.”
Francis took up an offer to write a racing column for a London newspaper before branching out into his distinctive equestrian thrillers, producing a novel a year for the next 38 years.
When his wife Mary died aged 76 in 2000, Francis stopped writing, but returned to it in 2006 with the first of the books he has co-written with his son.
“My brother and I grew up riding ponies and he would shout out of the window at us to get our heels down and our elbows in, but to be honest I’m of the mind that both ends are dangerous and the middle’s uncomfortable,” said Felix.
“Despite that I do love viewing horses from a distance and hopefully I can join my brother in Chepstow.
“My father often talks about his racing days and of course that life features strongly in his books.”
To view the original article
CLICK HERE
As an interesting aside I understand that in their early days as visitors to Chepstow both Dick Francis & Sir Gordon Richards were both in the habit of taking rooms in what is now my home but just before and shortly after WWII what was Glance Back Books and my home was in part a bed and breakfast venue for the races.
GLANCE BACK BOOKS
cnr. Middle & Upper Church Streets,
Chepstow,
Monmouthshire.
NP16 5ET
Initially stable lads and junior jockeys would stay here rather than the more resplendent Beaufort Hotel or The George Hotel or even The St. Mary's Hotel subsequently an ice cream parlour owned by The Giles Family in the days when the back yard was the Chepstow Boxing Club a facility which Marion Izzard ended when she and her husband owned it as a green grocer and when he repaired to Ireland she continued to run the business as a Green Grocers until Michael had finished his education when she sub let it initially to continue the trade but more recently as 'rooming' above and a trendy hairdressers in the shop area.
I gather many of the young apprentices continued to stay in our rooms long after they had made names for themselves commensurate with upgrading ;-)
"In politics, stupidity is not a handicap."
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821),
Regards,
Greg L-W.
for all my contact details & Blogs:
CLICK HERE
For More Information & Facts visit:
WEB SITES:
SilentMajority/
WelshAssembly
CatterpillarsAndButterflies
Greg's WordPress Blog
‘The arrogance and hubris of corrupt politicians
will be responsible for every drop of blood spilt
in the Wars of Disassociation, if Britain does not
leave the EU.
The ugly, centralised, undemocratic supra national policies being imposed by the centralised and largely unelected decisionmakers of The EU for alien aims, ailien values and to suit alien needs stand every possibility of creating 200,000,000 deaths across EUrope as a result of the blind arrogance and hubris of the idiologues in the central dictatorship, and their economic illiteracy marching hand in glove with the idiocy of The CAP & The CFP - both policies which deliver bills, destroy lives and denude food stocks.
The EU, due to the political idiocy and corruption of its undemocratic leaders, is now a net importer of food, no longer able to feed itself and with a decreasing range of over priced goods of little use to the rest of the world to sell with which to counter the net financial drain of endless imports.
British Politicians with pens and treachery, in pursuit
of their own agenda and greed, have done more
damage to the liberty, freedoms, rights and democracy
of the British peoples than any army in over 1,000 years.
The disastrous effects of British politicians selling Britain
into the thrall of foreign rule by the EU for their own
personal rewards has damaged the well-being of Britain
more than the armies of Hitler
and the Franco - German - Italian axis of 1939 - 1945.
~ for more Quotes & Facts:
http://www.silentmajority.co.uk/
############-\\\///-########### #
############= ~ = ############
###########(`~0~0~') ###########
--------oooO--------(_)-------Oooo---------
############Regards############
##########M r C H A D###########
Until we gain our liberty, restore our sovereignty, repatriate our democracy and reinstate our Justice system and our borders - defended by our Police and Military armed with sustainable and obtainable weaponry:
Treat every election as a referendum.
Don't waste your vote on a self serving Politician in ANY election until we are liberated from the EU and are a Free Sovereign peoples, with independent control of our own borders, making and managing Law & Justice for our own benefit, in our own elected Westminster Parliament where we can fire our politicians at the ballot box, if they fail to represent OUR best interests.
Make your vote count
Write on YOUR ballot Paper
LEAVE THE EU
