David Clyde was hoping to back a few winners when he turned up at Ayr Races last month but he set off home with a Holiday voucher for a week in beautiful Barbados.

The Shortlees man had taken his family to the Coral Scottish Grand National meeting back in April and his mum decided to return the favour by paying for the family to attend the Unite Scotland Summer Raceday on Saturday June 24.

Ayr Racecourse had teamed up with Stewart Travel and Barbados Tourism to offer a week on the Carribean island for two with £1,000 spending money thrown in for good measure, but anyone wanting to enter had to be at the racecourse that day and David was in the right place at the right time.

The day’s racing was headlined by the Ed Walker trained MAKAROVA (Paul Mulrennan) winning the £50,000 Listed Land O’Burns Stakes but David and fiancee Kelly had taken time out to enter the Barbados competition and, would you believe it, they WON!

David said later: “We’d been planning a wedding for 2024 and it was beyond our wildest dreams that we could have afforded to go on honeymoon to such an exotic destination.”

He continued: “Kelly had spotted the publicity surrounding the Barbados competition and when my mum said she’d bought us tickets to go along to watch the racing, there was never any doubt that we were going to enter what turned out to be a FREE competition.”

“We’re both over the moon that we’ve won such a tremendous prize and we’ve already been liasing with the wonderful staff at Stewart Travel to get the trip of a lifetime arranged for sometime after March next year when we plan to get married.”

David and Kelly are well aware that they might be able to go racing again once they get to Barbados as the island has a historic racetrack at the Garrison Savannah.

“Going racing to Ayr has landed us the honeymoon we could only have dreamed of and I doubt that either of us would turn down the chance to see the sport while we’re staying at the Accra Beach Hotel and Spa in such a fantastic place. “