Catch up on the latest point-to-point focus column, which appeared in the Racing Post on Friday, January 17.
Addicted racing fans will know the pleasure of pondering great horses while thumbing through books and watching films to glean details of their achievements.
It is no different for devotees of point-to-pointing, for the sport is plentiful with horses that became great through victories and endurance.
It grieves me to admit I missed Spartan Missile, the horse rated the greatest pointer/hunter chaser, although I watched on television his second to Aldaniti in the 1981 Grand National, and I also failed to witness the marvellous Flying Ace, who knocked up 59 wins between 1983 and 1992.
"It should have been 60," says his rider, Doreen Calder (pictured above), whose father Adam bred and trained the son of Champion Hurdle winner Saucy Kit at their Berwickshire home. "He lost a weight cloth when winning at Kelso after Charlie Macmillan and John Grossick [the well-known racing photographer] saddled him up and failed to tie the weight cloth to the saddle.
"As I walked back to weigh in Charlie was running alongside trying to stuff his loose change into my boots!"
Doreen rode the fabulous 'Ace' in all but one of his 88 races during a career which commenced as a seven-year-old, included 17 straight wins at the start of his career and five when he was aged 15. It was on his 70th start that he recorded his first and only pulled up. He did not grace the Foxhunter Chases at Cheltenham or Aintree, but did win Stratford's Champion Hunter Chase (then called the Horse & Hound Cup) in 1985.
My awareness of Flying Ace is derived principally from a collection of Mackenzie & Selby annuals which reveal that Flying Ace's dam, Flying Eye, and her four offspring ran 222 times between them, winning 92 races and finishing in 210. Extraordinary stuff.
At Saturday's Alnwick point-to-point in Northumberland I met Doreen, and she told me that while Flying Eye was just 16 hands she once carried 12st 10lb to victory in a Newbury hunter chase. Asked about Flying Ace's qualities, she said: "He was a very good, quick jumper, and because I always rode him we knew each other so well. He got to know the tracks – at Hexham going down the hill I would say 'can we go faster now?', and he would know exactly when to pick up.
"We've got about 30 horses at home including relations to Flying Ace, but none as good. We go on hoping to find another."
*John Grossick's account of the Kelso weight cloth incident adds to the tale. He says: "I pulled the girth up to the top hole, and said 'Charlie, you'll have to pull it up your side'. He said, 'I'm on the top hole too, but Doreen doesn't like the girth too tight'.
"He then said, 'John, you've put the weight cloth on the wrong way round. Doreen doesn't like the lead under her legs, but behind the saddle'. So we turned the weight cloth round, but that meant the runner through which the girth would normally go to secure it was now in the wrong place."
Dellercheckout set for Cheltenham
Talking of amateur women riders and famous horses, Caroline Robinson could soon be retracing the steps she took when becoming the first of her sex to ride a winner at the Cheltenham Festival.
Robinson won the 1983 Foxhunter Chase on Eliogarty and she now trains and part owns a horse who could join this year's line-up. Seven-year-old The Dellercheckout gained a BHA rating of 125 when with Paul Nicholls, and he has now won two open point-to-points for Robinson, beating useful rivals.