Point-to-Point Focus

Catch up on the latest point-to-point focus column, which appeared in the Racing Post on February 21.

Shropshire trainer Philip Rowley has taken a philosophical view of the decimation caused to his all-weather gallop by Storm Dennis.

“It’s probably somewhere down in the Bristol Channel by now,” says Rowley, with a sense of black humour. “On Sunday morning we found about three furlongs had been taken into the River Severn – but what have we got to complain about when other people have been hit by flooding above the height of their cookers? We’ve still got a house.

“The outdoor school was turned upside down, but we’ve put that back, and now we’re working on the gallop. It will cost thousands to put back, but we’ve been able to keep the horses going on a carpet gallop.”

News that Rowley’s string is unaffected is good news for those who hope his Hazel Hill wins back-to-back St James’s Place Foxhunter Chases at the Cheltenham Festival. The 12-year-old jumped uncharacteristically to his right when beaten by Minella Rocco at Wetherby, but was found to have pulled a muscle, probably at the first ditch, and Rowley does not expect a repeat.

It has been a backs-to-the-wall week across the world of point-to-pointing. Stable staff have been taking weekly soakings since September, trainers are yearning for fixture stability to clarify running plans – one of eight meetings took place last weekend – and organisers who stage meetings have been in overdrive.

The River Wye was never going to remain within its banks and it was an easy call to abandon Sunday’s meeting on meadows near Monmouth, but other fixtures have been taunted and teased by this wettest of winters. The meeting at Duncombe Park in Yorkshire has been called off for the past two weekends, but the organisers have refused to cave in and hope to run tomorrow after another Yorkshire meeting at Askham Bryan was abandoned.

Similarly, the loss of a meeting at Great Trethew in Cornwall has opened the door to a third attempt by a fixture at Wadebridge which had been abandoned. Flexibility in such dire times is key, although the amount of organisation going on behind the scenes by volunteers has been worthy of a war effort.

Long gone are the days when a local GP and single St John Ambulance were regarded as adequate for administering first aid at a meeting, and many fixtures find difficulty in acquiring medical cover. Doing so for rearranged meetings ramps up that challenge.