Catch up on the latest point-to-point focus column, which appeared in the Racing Post on Friday, February 7
News of Robert Alner's death earlier this week drew a metaphorical veil across the sport of point-to-pointing.
In terms of racing he was one of life's late achievers, a dairy farmer whose hobby of point-to-point riding and training began flourishing in the late 1980s. In 1992, no fewer than 31 years after he had ridden his first winner, he won Britain's men's championship at the age of 48.
Totting up an early seven winners the following season he was on course to defend his title until lining up in a race at Larkhill, where, at the second fence, one of the runners jumped into him and broke his leg.
Recognising the extent of the injury, unable to pull his horse up, and with the field pounding towards the open ditch, Alner took the least-worst option, and bailed out the side door. The following season he returned and rode two more winners in point-to-points and one in a Stratford hunter chase before hanging up his saddle to focus on training.
Four years before that title victory I had landed my first full-time job in journalism at a Wiltshire weekly newspaper. With a National Union of Journalists' card in my pocket and notebook and pen in hand I was able to quiz the trainers and riders who saddled winners at the local tracks of Larkhill and Badbury Rings. My desire for knowledge of their sport became a passion.
After John Dufosee's wife Jane said, 'Come and ride out', that learning curve took a sharp incline, and after a few visits there I approached Alner to ask if I could ride out at his yard. Joining in with his string, cantering up the steep fields around his home, and listening to that honeyed burr in his voice was a lesson in life, not just training and horsemanship.
No doubt hundreds of people have personal memories of the man, but mine is him, on a horse, against a backdrop of that fabulous Dorset landscape.
Horseheath puts on a show
There are times when a race meeting pulls together all the credentials for a memorable day's racing.
Such an occasion took place at Horseheath in Cambridgeshire last weekend, and while a buffeting wind was a spoiler it could not diminish the pleasure gained from a card of depth and talent. Watch out for the David Kemp-trained Law Of Gold who won the men's open race, teeing up a possible bid for the St James's Place Foxhunter Chase.
The conditions race which opened the meeting epitomised much that is special about point-to-pointing. Thirteen ran, and the field was taken along at a solid gallop by 15-year-old Gunmoney in his tenth season of racing.
What a legend, who although conceding the lead running to the second-last fence finished third, his fifteenth place to go with 18 victories from 46 starts in point-to-points.
The winner, Fumet D'Oudairies, is ten years Gunmoney's junior, and what a story he is unfolding, having been bought for just £800 at Doncaster in May last year. The decision by Tom Ellis, Britain's Foran Equine champion point-to-point trainer, to invest in such a cheap horse was a gamble, but what a good decision, for Fumet D'Oudairies has now won three on the bounce, and is providing any amount of fun for The Ice and a Slice Racing Club.
David Kemp (left) and Dale Peters, who teamed up with Law Of Gold at Horseheath