'We were just behind JP McManus and Dai Walters, so we're up with the big boys!'

Proud Welsh owner Janet Davies has enjoyed success with trainer Evan Williams with the likes of Court Minstrel and West With The Wind. Here she tells Peter Thomas how she became involved.

My husband Peter and I had been going with friends to Aintree for a few years and we loved it, so one day I said to him that I'd like to buy a racehorse. He said if I wanted to, I should go ahead, but he wasn't going to get involved. In the end, he'd be every bit as keen as me and definitely more sentimental about the horses.

I did ride ponies as a little girl and take part in a few gymkhanas, but I knew very little when in 2008 I went to see Evan Williams, whose yard [at Cowbridge in south Wales] was ten minutes from where we lived.