Sunday was a busy, eventful and significant day in the point to point world. No less than four meetings went ahead, which provided plenty of winning opportunities for our leading riders.

The most significant winner of the weekend goes to Jamie Codd’s second leg of a double at Tinahely in the final race. Having already won the opening four-year-old maiden on another classy Gordon Elliott-trained, Gigginstown owned-debutante, Alpha Des Obeaux, he was left on the 599 winner mark. He then went on to finish second in the next two races, frustrating for him not only in his quest to reach the milestone, but because his arch rival, Derek O’Connor was readily cleaning up at another meeting, Lemonfield. Here, he took four of the first five races, which significantly reduced Jamie’s lead over him to just seven. Derek also has the support of the powerful Gigginstown team as he partners those trained by Pat Doyle and it was that owner/trainer/jockey combination which produced the eye-catching performance from Whistle Dixie, a four-year-old mare who is a half sister to Kicking King.

It was the final race of the day in Tinahely that saw Jamie land his 600th career win courtesy of Laser Hawk, trained by Paul Martin Pierce. In just a five runner field, Jamie’s mount was a short-priced favourite and duly obliged in such a facile fashion as the bookies predicted. At 600 winners, Jamie is the third winning-most point to point rider of all time behind Derek O’Connor (907) and John Thomas McNamara (602). The achievement is easily underestimated; put it into the context that between the three of them, they are responsible for 2,109 winners, which roughly works out at three entire seasons worth of winners, and maybe you can appreciate what a phenomenal feat it is.

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There are some extremely close battles forming in other categories; the novice title (for which riders must be under the age of 21 at the start of the season) took an interesting turn when Rob James rode a treble at The Pigeons, boosting him to pole position ahead of last year’s winner, Harley Dunne.

I was delighted to see Evanna McCutcheon also ride a double at Bandon point to point, which levels her with Rachel Blackmore and Maxine O’Sullivan for the ladies’ title. Evanna was my biggest danger in this title last season; she eventually finished second, but she certainly did not go down without a fight. She has now proved herself as a real live contender again this year and I would be thrilled for her to win.

The events in the opening race at The Pigeons really have to be seen to be believed which can be done on P2Ptv on the p2p.ie website. With three runners already out of the fifteen runner race by the second fence, Tayto Park was left with the lead approaching the fourth, which is located on the outside of the lorry park. He decided that he had already had quite enough for the day and ran out to return to his lorry, in doing so breaking the wing of the fence. Possibly the fright of this caused the second and third horses to both refuse to jump the fence, which left very little room for the remaining runners to negotiate the fence. Only five managed, of which just four finished the race. It proved quite the spectacle and is well worth a watch. CL