Glamorgan Hunt Point to Point

The Glamorgan Hunt Point to Point was held in Ystradowen today. Point-to-Point racing is steeple chase racing for amateurs and is usually run by a local Hunt. The season runs from the end of November up until June and features over 200 fixtures, the majority being held at weekends across the UK. Most of our local ones in South Wales are between Feb and May. Races are generally run over 3 miles with a minimum of 18 fences to be jumped.  The sport originated from hunting men who raced their hunters over natural countryside from “Point to Point”  More on the History of Point to Points My father trained point to pointers and I spent most of my weekends at point to points during the season, as I got older I spent a large amount of my teenage years riding out and on the gallops, we didn’t have the luxury of proper gallops in those days and most of our galloping was done twice a week 4 times round the field and occasionally on the beach but the best place to gallop then was on the top of Cowbridge downs. I  hunted most weeks in the winter as  in those days you had to hunt 11 times to qualify to race. (Anthony Martin was the Master then) I think you may have too hunt now to qualify but I’m not sure on that one.  Anyway Jen, Amelia and I went down to the course and got there just at the end of the second race. We met up with Sharon and Camelia and went to the paddock to have a look at the runners in the 3rd race. There were 10 runners and I picked out a horse but Camelia new of the horse and didn’t think it would be that good so at the last minute I changed my mind and put a couple of quid on Passenger Omar who won the race. Amelia and I celebrated and spent the winnings on wine and doughnuts. The horse I picked in the fourth race was one of the favourites and wasn’t worth betting on so I picked an outsider. I don’t know why because I never pick greys and proceeded to tell everyone they never win and it didn’t in fact it walked home. In the fifth race there were 8 runners I narrowed my choice down to two and put my £2 on the ‘wrong one’ it was 4th, the other one was 2nd and would you believe the winner was grey. In the sixth race I randomly picked a name without looking at the horses and put my money on it each way, which means it needed to come 1st 2nd or 3rd to pick up some winnings and it came 2nd which was amazing cause after the first lap it was 8th and quite a way off the leader. The going was rather soft but I’m pleased to say I didnt see any accidents. Its a nice course at Ystradowen and very good for viewing the racing. Gallery

Posted on Sunday, March 29th, 2009 at 1:26 am You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.