Point-to-Point Focus

Catch up on the latest point-to-point focus column, which appeared in the Racing Post on Friday, Dec 13.

There was a curious race on Sunday at Ffos Las’s annual point-to-point.

Twelve horses started for the mixed open, a race full of winning ex-hurdlers, chasers and pointers, yet ten pulled up and one refused when pottering at the final fence, miles behind the emphatic winner who made all and literally galloped his rivals into submission. Make a note of his name, Wishing And Hoping (pictured above), a dual hurdle winner for Alan King, but a horse who found fences very challenging and fell on three of four starts.

Owners Trish and Peter Andrews opted to try their horse in point-to-points, and sent him to Shropshire trainer Phil Rowley. Two wins in two starts was a good introduction for Wishing And Hoping last season, but at Ffos Las, on ground that was very testing, he was in a different class, and now looks a serious challenger to his stablemate, Hazel Hill, for the St James’s Place Foxhunter Chase.

Rowley says of the nine-year-old: “I wasn’t sure about running him on such testing ground, but he got into a rhythm and stayed in it the whole way – it might have been that the other horses didn’t handle the ground. He’s come out of the race fine, so the next step will be another open point-to-point or hunters’ chase.

“Hazel Hill has done it and proved it – he relaxes in his races, and the other lad [Wishing And Hoping] has a bit more to learn on that score, but they could easily both run at Cheltenham.

“Let’s face it, point-to-point trainers only get really good horses if they have had a problem, and I’m just very lucky to have two such good ones at the same time.”

Hazel Hill remains on course to make his season’s reappearance at Chaddesley Corbett on Friday, December 27.

*Point-to-pointing provides an introduction to jockeys, and owners, too.

One example was provided at Sandown on Saturday when Esprit Du Large became a first Grade One winner for William and Angela Rucker. Angela comes from a family steeped in pointing, and rode some 89 winners until calling it a day three years ago. Her mother, Pat Tollit, was six-time British champion, and her grandfather, Major Harold Rushton, was a successful trainer/rider whose best horse, O’Dell, won Aintree’s Foxhunters’ Chase twice. Angela’s sisters, nieces and nephews are all currently involved in pointing.

Esprit Du Large also provided a first top-level win for jockey Adam Wedge, who rode in points for three seasons, and for trainer Evan Williams, a former national champion rider, and a man who might have remained a dairy farmer had pointing not given him a racing foothold.