Rebecca Curtis: Wales’s Cliff-Top Champion of the Jumps

On the west coast of Wales, a mile inland from the Pembrokeshire coast, sits one of British and Irish jump racing’s most quietly formidable operations. Fforest Farm, near Newport in Pembrokeshire, is home to Rebecca Curtis Racing — a yard that for nearly two decades has been sending horses out from clifftop gallops and the cleanest sea air in Britain to win at the sport’s biggest festivals.

Curtis started training in 2005, and in the seasons since she has built a reputation for taking staying chasers and hurdlers to the very top of the game. The numbers tell part of the story: 19 graded or listed wins and a string of successes at Cheltenham, Aintree and Punchestown, all achieved from a modest, family-feel base on the Welsh coast rather than the sport’s traditional powerhouse regions.

The yard’s finest hour came in March 2020, when Lisnagar Oscar landed the Paddy Power Stayers’ Hurdle, a Grade 1 at the Cheltenham Festival over two miles seven furlongs. It was the culmination of a patient campaign; the same horse had already announced himself with a Grade 2 win in the Albert Bartlett Prestige Novices’ Hurdle at Haydock in February 2019. Winning a Championship race on the Cheltenham stage remains the benchmark of the training craft, and Curtis has done it.

Lisnagar Oscar is far from the only star to emerge from Fforest Farm. Bigbadjohn took the Grade 2 Sodexo Reynoldstown Novices’ Chase at Ascot in February 2017, while Irish Cavalier won the Grade 2 bet365 Charlie Hall Chase at Wetherby in October 2016. More recently, Haiti Couleurs carried the yard’s colours to victory in the Grade 2 William Hill Denman Chase at Newbury in February 2026, ridden by Sean Bowen. Across the generations, the common thread is a willingness to aim high with genuine staying horses.

What sets the operation apart is as much its setting as its results. The gallops overlook the sea, and owners are welcomed by appointment for tea, cake and a walk around the string. It is a personal, hands-on approach that reflects Curtis’s Welsh roots and her enduring connection to the Pembrokeshire landscape. Twenty seasons in, Rebecca Curtis has proven that Welsh roots and a national — and international — stage are not mutually exclusive.