With a few exceptions – Frankel being one – great champions taste defeat at some point.
A version of this article first appeared in the Racing Post on Friday 31st May
So it was that Gina Andrews exited Chaddesley Corbett in Worcestershire on Spring Bank Holiday Monday evening as the former women’s champion, a description she dreaded like a broken stirrup leather. After nine straight championships and ten in total, not to mention riding her 400th point-to-point winner just 24 hours earlier, Andrews paid credit to Izzie Marshall (pictured above with mens champion James King), who won with a bit in hand by a score of 24 to 21.
Ihandaya (Natalie Parker) beating the smart Macklin (Gina Andrews) at Chaddesley Corbett on the final day of the season
Marshall’s mission impossible had become reality, but unlikely feats have become a theme in her family. In terms of riding improbability, Izzie’s victory has just one rival from the first half of this year; her brother Charlie’s win in April’s Maryland Hunt Cup, the first by a Briton, and achieved on the rank outsider.
James King, with 49 winners, eased home the wide-margin winner of the men’s championship, while Josh Newman (15+ horses), Dean Summersby (6-14) and Rob Varnham (1-5) clinched trainers’ titles for yards of varying sizes. Anna Johnston and Ed Vaughan became novice champion riders, the Nickie Sheppard-trained Grace A Vous Enki the leading horse, and Tim Vaughan the winning-most owner.
Andrews will be odds-on to reclaim her title next season and she could become Britain’s first champion rider and trainer in the same season, although the second element will depend on the number of horses she handles following the recent opening of a licensed yard by her husband, Tom Ellis.
Punters might like to add to their Racing Post horse trackers three horses who won on the final day, starting with Imperial Pride, who took The Jockey Club’s mares’ final for trainer Oliver Bowd. His boss, David Dennis, will now aim her at a race held at a Jockey Club racecourse where, on her first three runs, she has the chance to double any prize money she wins. She looks more than capable. Two six-year-olds to note for hunter chase successes next season are the imposing Ihandaya, from Nickie Sheppard’s stable, and the Summersby-trained Jet Smart.
Imperial Pride (Jack Andrews), who is one to follow when running at a Jockey Club racecourse
The last-named horse has been ridden by Darren Edwards, who won his first race in 2001, and who, approaching his 40th birthday, is about to hang up his saddle. Twenty years ago he won Cheltenham’s Walwyn/Muir Chase on the Martin Pipe-trained Maximize and, before he joined the PPA board two years ago, he had long been an unheralded ambassador for the sport. Stalwarts like Edwards are loved by punters for doing the right thing in the saddle time and again, and he will be missed in his West Country domain.
Darren Edwards has been a great ambassador for point-to-pointing
It was a season like no other in terms of waterlogged and abandoned or postponed meetings, and many fixture organisers were left bereft and out of pocket. Thirty-five meetings, more than a quarter of the fixture list, were abandoned.
Meetings that went ahead enjoyed very good entries and runner numbers, car parks filled and enduring showers right up to the present have resulted in quality racing to the final bell.
It has not been easy at times, and some trainers have experienced poor seasons, with the mild, soggy weather being blamed for bugs that yards could never quite shake off. Yet this is a hardy sport for hardy participants – they are fewer in number than in decades past, but no less committed. Roll on next season.
