Dai-Sport Horse Racing – Brian Lee’s Expert View

Meet the new horse racing columnist for dai-sport. 

Brian Lee, a former long distance runner, has been reporting on Welsh horse racing for national and local press for more than half-a-century. He is THE expert on his subject in Wales.

Brian’s love of horse racing began at Chepstow after the last war when as a young lad he helped his father Billy sold The Sporting Life to racegoers on their way into the racecourse.

As a young schoolboy, Brian often visited the Cardiff Continental Waxworks in St Mary Street and would gaze up in awe at the wax effigy of the famed flat racing jockey Sir Gordon Richards.

Many, many years later at a Chepstow Racecourse luncheon Brian met the great man and tried to persuade him that as he was born in Shrewsbury on the Welsh border and was the son of a Welsh miner that he must be Welsh.

Although Sir Gordon agreed that Richards was a Welsh name he didn’t agree to being a Welshman. Sir Gordon kindly signed Brian’s menu card as plain Gordon Richards.

Brian wishes now that he had asked him about that wax effigy dressed in the Lord Glanely racing colours that Gordon had worn when winning the 1930 St Leger on Singapore.

British Champion jockey Sir Gordon Richards (1904 – 1986). Pic: Getty Images.

However, Sir Gordon did tell him some interesting stories of leading racehorse owner Lord Glanely whom he used to ride for and who is buried at Cathays Cemetery in Cardiff.

Although  Gordon set a record when winning 13 consecutive races at Chepstow, he told Brian that his favourite racecourse was Newmarket  with its wide open spaces.

Brian, who has reported on the Welsh point-to-point scene for more than 50 years, was honoured to receive the John Ayres Special Recognition Award in 2016 for reporting and promoting the sport.

That meant a lot to Brian as Cardiff saddler John Ayres was no stranger to Chepstow Racecourse and Brian, who knew him personally.

Brian, who as a young lad worked at Cardiff’s defunct Ely Racecourse marking out football pitches, has been writing a weekly Turf Talk column for the Western Mail every Tuesday for many years.

He is the author of 30 books, mostly on his beloved hometown Cardiff, is working on a Welsh Horse Racing Miscellany, a follow-up to his best selling Racing Rogues: The Scams, Gambles and Scandals of Horse Racing in Wales (St David’s Press).

Champion jockey Peter Scudamore. Pic: Leo Mason/Popperfoto/Getty Images)

Brian is also the author of The Welsh Grand National – From Deerstalker to Emperor’s Choice (The History Press) – and former National Hunt champion jockey Peter Scudamore, in his foreword, said: “It is an engrossing study that documents the history of the great race and also charts the development of National Hunt racing.”

Brian has been reported to the Jockey Club on several occasions in the past on the false charge of bringing horse racing in disrepute was banned from two point-to-point courses. He turned up anyway.

Working as a stereotyper at the Western Mail & Echo when newspapers were printed by the old hot metal method, Brian studied how reporters wrote up their stories.

Mail racing editor Brian Radford and later South Wales Echo sports editor and current dai-sport journalist Terry Phillips, who agreed to him writing a Welsh horse racing column, really got him started.

Brian’s first horse racing column will appear on dai-sport later.