Ludlow Racecourse opens its 2026/27 National Hunt season on Wednesday 7 October with Ludlow Brewery Day, the usual curtain-raiser at a track that has quietly become one of the more distinctive small circuits in British racing.

Tucked into rolling Shropshire countryside and wrapped around its own 18-hole golf course, Ludlow is a sharp, right-handed oval sitting on a base of roughly 70 per cent gravel and 30 per cent loam. That mix drains fast, so when other tracks are unraceable, Ludlow’s going is often still good or good to soft. A reservoir on site feeds a watering system that can put down half an inch of water across the whole circuit in a day, giving the course an unusual amount of control over its own ground — a detail punters checking betting apps for updates will want to keep in mind, since Ludlow can stay raceable when other fixtures fall foul of the weather.

Simon Sherwood runs that system now. He’s the former champion amateur jockey who partnered Desert Orchid to a famous victory in the 1989 Cheltenham Gold Cup, one of the defining moments of that era’s jump racing. These days, he’s Ludlow’s clerk of the course, and he’s called it “a wonderfully quirky racecourse,” pointing to the road crossings and the gravel base as the two things that catch jockeys and horses out. Three separate points on the B4365 get matted over on racedays. The chase and hurdle courses run slightly different lines around the same oval, with the hurdle track sitting outside the chase circuit, so the turns come more easily for the smaller obstacles.

A season the border-country trainers owned

The season that concluded in May went the way it usually does at Ludlow. Stables from along the Welsh border and into the West Midlands took most of what mattered, with Venetia Williams, Henry Daly, Dan and Harry Skelton, and Nigel Twiston-Davies all turning up in the winner’s enclosure through the winter. Some of that is proximity. Some of it is that Ludlow suits a specific type of horse, nimble over fences, happy on quick ground, unbothered by tight turns, the kind of horse the Jockey Club describes as bred and trained specifically for jump racing rather than repurposed off the Flat.

The best example came on 4 February, when Williams sent out the French recruit Demnat in the Attwood Memorial Trophy Handicap Chase. It was his first British start in almost three years, and he won by 15 lengths under Charlie Deutsch. Williams said afterwards the horse had been so relaxed beforehand that he went to post “like he was going on a picnic.” Three weeks later, the Forbra Gold Cup, Ludlow’s showpiece handicap, went to the 12/1 outsider Aboutdamntime under Craig Nichol, who got the better of fancied runners from the Skelton and Daly yards by half a length. The race is named for the 50/1 shock winner of the 1932 Grand National, and the Sky Sports Racing full result has Aboutdamntime crossing the line half a length clear in 6m 9.57s on ground officially good to soft.

The season wrapped up on Ladies Day in early May with winners spread from the Skelton, Daly, Candlish stables, and the charismatic performer that is Zacony Rebel from Sarah-Jayne Davies’ yard in Leominster. No single yard ran away with it. The same handful of names just kept showing up, providing a familiarity that is a comfort to regular racegoers.

Small, independent, and getting better

Ludlow is unusual in British racing for being privately owned and run through Ludlow Race Club, rather than sitting within one of the big racecourse groups. That hasn’t stopped it from competing on facilities. In 2023, it was named Britain’s most-improved racecourse in the industry’s Quality Assured Racecourse Scheme, lifting its score by 19 percentage points and picking up separate accolades for cleanliness and staff service. Attendance actually rose that year, even with more meetings called off than usual. Recent investment has gone into permanent facilities behind and within the weighing room, replacing portable buildings with a proper medical room, canteen and larger changing space for the growing number of women jockeys.

The awards haven’t changed what the place actually is: a course built around its ground, its road crossings and the golf course sitting inside the track, which is exactly why it doesn’t feel like the bigger, flatter, more corporate circuits. Sherwood talks about wanting to hold on to “a really friendly feel” as the course grows, a point he expands on in a longer interview on the racecourse’s own site. Whether that survives further modernising is within the Club’s gift to manage.

For now, the focus is on Ludlow Brewery Day and the first cards of 2026/27. If last season is anything to go by, the border-country trainers will be there from the first afternoon, and the ground, as ever at Ludlow, will ride quicker than most. Like every track from the Midlands southward, it’s crying out for rain.

The best example came on 4 February, when Williams sent out the French recruit Demnat in the Attwood Memorial Trophy Handicap Chase. It was his first British start in almost three years, and he won by 15 lengths under Charlie Deutsch. Williams said afterwards the horse had been so relaxed beforehand that he went to post “like he was going on a picnic.” Three weeks later, the Forbra Gold Cup, Ludlow’s showpiece handicap, went to the 12/1 outsider Aboutdamntime under Craig Nichol, who got the better of fancied runners from the Skelton and Daly yards by half a length. The race is named for the 50/1 shock winner of the 1932 Grand National, and the Sky Sports Racing full result has Aboutdamntime crossing the line half a length clear in 6m 9.57s on ground officially good to soft.

The season wrapped up on Ladies Day in early May with winners spread across the Skelton, Daly and S-J Davies stables. No single yard ran away with it. The same handful of names just kept showing up.