Ffos Las going flat out

Ffos Las is all geared up for its Flat fixture on Tuesday having already staged a card over jumps as well as an Arab meeting.And officials at the Carmarthen track are delighted several leading trainers, including Barry Hills, John Gosden, Mick Channon and Brian Meehan, are sending horses to compete on the seven-race programme."It's nice to be supported by such a good number of high-quality trainers for our first fixture and the racing looks competitive," said clerk of the course Tim Long."There seems to be a good amount of interest. The pre-sales have been exceptionally good. It was astounding how many annual members Ffos Las attracted. The concept of a racecourse in this area was really taken up by a lot of people."We're not expecting as many as we did at our opening fixture or indeed what we will experience in August for the official opening, but I think it will be a good crowd."Long reported the ground to be good despite receiving plenty of rainfall over the past week."At the moment it's currently good ground. It's been a very interesting week. With this course very much in its infancy we're all on a learning curve as to how the weather will affect it and how we think it's going to ride," he went on."Last Thursday afternoon through to first thing Friday we had over two inches of rain and yet never at any stage was it unraceable. It drained so phenomenally well. It's been constructed to cope with the high levels of rainfall that are typical of this area."Although we've been having sharpish showers it's dried back nicely and is currently good ground. We are confident the track can take quite considerable levels of rainfall and still maintain a very uniform level of going. It was a sensible way to construct the track in that fashion."It's going to be an absolutely fair track. It's been constructed evenly, no variations due to soil depth or soil type. It's perfectly level, there's no bias either way in that respect. and there's such extensive wide bends. There shouldn't be any excuses."