Robbie Llewellyn

Covid chicken sales and working on Hollywood blockbusters might be an unlikely route to National Hunt success, but Robbie Llewellyn is forging an entrepreneurial path. Gemma Redrup meets him

I WOULDN'T call Robbie Llewellyn's path into training racehorses unconventional rather, enterprising. More on that later. For now, let's focus on the 33-year-old's achievements thus far, some 18 months into his National Hunt training career.

So far, he's secured 27 wins from 167 runs. This season, he's achieved 21 wins from 96 runs a solid 22% strike rate from the 27 horses he's sent out from his yard, just south of the M4 in Wiltshire, which borders the Barbury Castle Estate.

"The two Ascot winners we had in December 2023 are my most memorable," says Robbie as we chat after watching one lot ride out.

"To have a runner at Ascot is amazing, and I was a bit punchy to send Titan Discovery there, but for him to win and then for Top Cloud, who we only paid £8,000 for, to follow suit the next day - it was such a special weekend and it still hasn't yet really sunk in.

"To have walked into that winner's enclosure was a surreal feeling as it's such a special place." From an early age, it seemed almost inevitable that Robbie would work with horses at some point during his life.

“Dad rode in point-to-points and Mum’s brother was the Welsh champion point-topoint jockey and then trained,” he explains.

Robbie grew up in a small village called Wick in the Vale of Glamorgan in Wales, about a mile and a half from the coast.

“We had ponies as kids and did Pony Club and pony racing with some success, finishing second in the final at Aintree,” says Robbie, who went on to ride in point to-points and rode out for trainer Tim Vaughan at the weekends – before going to fellow trainer Evan Williams for a summer when he was 16.

“I stayed in school to do my A levels and then went to college for a year but hated it, so came back to Wales and worked for David Brace and stayed there for seven years.