yet more contributions were needed from the directors. The first jump racing took place in March 1927. Since then the course has been used for flat racing in the summer and jumping in the winter. To begin with, the flat racing was more prestigious, with the Welsh Derby, Oaks and St Leger being run for good prize money. In 1933, at a two-day meeting, the multiple champion jockey Gordon Richards won eleven consecutive races at Chepstow – all six races on the first day and the first five races on the next, before being beaten in a close finish in the final race of the meeting. RAF Chepstow During the Second World War, the entire site became designated as RAF Chepstow, an operational outpost of RAF St. Athan, No. 32 Maintenance Unit RAF and No. 19 Maintenance Unit RAF. Equipped with only a grass runway in the centre of the course, additional aircraft accommodation for bombers was created at Oakgrove on the opposite side of the road, accessed by stopping the traffic to allow the aircraft to cross. Types stationed on the course during the war included: Boulton Paul Defiant Hawker Hurricane Armstrong Whitworth Whitley Vickers Wellington Bristol Blenheim Postwar After the war and the demise of both Cardiff and the nearby Caerleon (Newport) course, the Welsh National was transferred to Chepstow in 1949. From then on, National Hunt racing overtook flat racing as the dominant activity as a string of good class horses and top trainers and jockeys contested the race. The three and three-quarter mile race, more recently known as the Coral Welsh National, owes much to the support of the bookmaking firm for establishing it as one of the major events in the National Hunt calendar. It have sponsored it for over forty years, making it the second longest continuous race sponsorship. The opening of the Severn Bridge and the completion of the M4 motorway made the course more accessible to English racegoers. The Clay family, which had bought Piercefield House in 1861, were involved with the management course since its formation. Listed on the AIM stock market as a plc in the late 1990s, Sir Stanley Clarke built up an 80% stake in the company and then reversed his existing Northern Racing racecourse holdings into the shell. Clarke took over as executive chairman of the Racecourse Company in 2000, resigning in 2003 before his 2004 death