It's easy to forget nowadays that the Aintree we know and love very nearly disappeared altogether under the front buckets of developers' diggers. During the sixties and seventies, the racecourse was owned by the Topham family, who expressed an intention to sell the course for development. So began an era of the "last ever Grand National". One idea mooted during the seventies was to run the race at Larkhill. And it's true the courses have a wide galloping track in common, even

It's a pig of a drive from Wilsford near Larkhill to Plumpton in East Sussex - only 113 miles but for anyone who's visited the picturesque Sussex course, a hard-won journey unless coming by train from London to the station at the bottom of the course. And when the 8am inspection became a 10am inspection, I'll wager Seamus Mullins was cursing that the Clerk of the Course might just have got it wrong. When the third inspection passed muster just 20 minutes before a first race a

One of the upsides of this current lockdown is a far higher following for racing, with TV audiences well in excess of the norm, in the absence of more active things to do on a Saturday. ITV Racing has capitalized on this by extending its coverage to include more days, and more tracks than the usual, as Saturday's visit to Taunton illustrated. What chance we could persuade them to visit a Pointing fixture? But it is Cheltenham season, where every race is by default some sort o

Many who follow Point-to-Point racing bemoan the poor prize money compared to our professional sibling. After all, to all intents and purposes, the sport is the same throughout. I wonder though if that isn't precisely our sport's leading issue. The sport has been forced to mimic racing under Rules and lost its points of difference. I believe we are headed for a reckoning as a result of the Covid crisis. Pointing's fixture list has been on a steady downward trend over many yea

As if the suspension of Point-to-Point racing wasn't disruptive enough to the season, the chances of aspiring Amateur riders have been dealt a further blow by the British Horseracing Authority's restriction on any amateur riding in races under Rules. This is the result of a DCMS ruling that amateurs and specifically Hunter Chases, do not register as "elite sport". The result is that where trainers and riders had previously transferred their allegiance to the limited number of

It can be difficult to raise enthusiasm for early January racing after the richness of the Christmas programme, but today's 3 fixtures from Chepstow, Kempton and Wincanton, including several rescheduled Graded events from cancelled fixtures between Christmas and New Year, did exactly that, showcasing the sport at its best. In conditions that have been anything but favourable, ground staff at each course succeeded in beating Jack Frost, and whilst the going was dead everywher

In the light of the Prime Minister’s Announcement last night, the Point-to-Point Authority acted immediately to call a pause to the Point to-Point season from today. Peter Wright, CEO of the governing body, remarked, "Whilst I know that many of you would have liked to press on, and indeed the sport remains inherently safe, we cannot claim that we are acting in a vacuum. The national situation is worsening, and that means amongst other things that the availability of medical