Chepstow Racecourse
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| Location | Chepstow, Monmouthshire |
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| Coordinates | 51°39′23″N 2°41′19″W / 51.65639°N 2.68861°WCoordinates: 51°39′23″N 2°41′19″W / 51.65639°N 2.68861°W |
| Owned by | Arena Racing Company |
| Screened on | At The Races |
| Course type |
Flat National Hunt |
| Official website | |
Chepstow Racecourse is a thoroughbred horse racing course located just north of the town of Chepstow in Monmouthshire, Wales, near the southern end of the Wye Valley and close to the border with England.
The track is a roughly oval circuit of just under 2 miles (3,200 m). It is a left-handed undulating course, used for both flat and jump racing. The finishing straight is about 5 furlongs (3,300 ft; 1,000 m) in length, with five fences on the chase course to be jumped. There are eleven fences on a complete circuit. There is also a straight mile course.
There are 32 fixtures in the 2016 calendar year including the new two-day Totepool Jumps Festival with £300,000 of prize money on Saturday 8th and Sunday 9th October. This meeting features the Grade Three Tote Silver Trophy (Handicap Hurdle) and the Grade Two Totepool Persian War Novices' Hurdle. The £150,000 Coral Welsh Grand National takes place on Tuesday 27th December.
Chepstow is one of three racecourses in Wales, the others being at Bangor-on-Dee and at Ffos Las. It is also used as a venue for numerous other indoor and outdoor events, such as concerts, weddings and conferences.
Several places in South Wales had race meetings in the late nineteenth century and there had been racing at St Arvans, very close to the present course, between 1892 and 1914. In 1925 a group of ten South Wales gentry and businessmen, that included Courtenay Morgan, 1st Viscount Tredegar who was also Lord-Lieutenant of Monmouthshire, and Lord Queenborough; formed a company to purchase Piercefield House, and lay out a new racecourse in its estate. Despite struggling to raise enough cash, the racecourse was opened on 6 August 1926. The first race was a two-year-old seller won by Lord Harewood's colt Conca D'Oro, the 7-4 favourite. The two day flat race meeting had good prize money and was termed "The Welsh Goodwood".
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