A NEW season of point-to-pointing gets underway, with the traditional curtain-raising fixture in Toomebridge this afternoon.

The Mid-Antrim fixture is one of 26 point-to-points scheduled for the autumn term, a decrease from one on the 2024 pre-Christmas campaign. This follows the disappointing news that the West Waterford fixture at Boulta on November 9th was cancelled before the season got up and running.

Prior to that cancellation, the 2025 autumn schedule was set to heavily mirror the 2024 season, with the sole exception of the October fixtures at Tinahely and Peppards Castle switching positions.

The northern region remains heavily weighted in October, to the frustration of its handlers. Three of the four fixtures there in the autumn take place on the first three Saturdays of the season.

The western region will again start with the Galway Blazers fixture at Loughrea on Sunday, October 12th, with a further three fixtures in the region scheduled in November.

Action on the Cork and Waterford circuit will get underway with Curraghmore on Sunday, October 26th, with the eastern region dominating with 12 fixtures, beginning tomorrow in Castletown-Geoghegan.

Bigger purses

The start of the new season has been bolstered by an increase in prize money levels for all races outside of the commercially lucrative four and five-year-old maiden races.

All maiden races that feature horses aged six or older, winners’ contests and open lightweight races will now be worth €2,000.

The 8% increase has been warmly welcomed by handlers who had previously expressed their dissatisfaction earlier this year when Horse Racing Ireland had only committed to a €100 increase as part of their 2025 budget announcement.

“We are happy to get the prize money up to €2,000,” Gerry Kelleher, chairperson of the Point-to-Point Handlers Association, reported.

“We met with the IHRB and HRI in April, and I feel like we made a lot of progress at that meeting. After the disappointment of only getting €100 extra for the spring, there was a lot of positive engagement with Suzanne Eade, Jonathan Mullin and Richard Pugh from HRI, and it is great to see this additional prize money come from that.

“We all know the way costs are going. The cost of schooling is increasing, the price of feed is going up, and there is no hold-up in the costs increasing, so this prize money increase is definitely a help.”

The group now hope to build upon this positive start in their engagements.

“We pushed at the meeting for the need to have a strategic plan in place for point-to-pointing, because it is important to have a plan and vision in place for where point-to-pointing will be in the next five or 10 years, with prize money a big part of that,” Kelleher continued. “Hopefully, this will be the start of a great working relationship with them going forward.”

THOSE in attendance at either Toomebridge or Castletown-Geoghegan this weekend will notice one slight difference to the obstacles that are being jumped. The toe and knee board markings at all fences will be white this season, replacing the previous orange colour.

The IHRB has elected to make this a compulsory change due to the ‘strong scientific basis for moving to white identification markers on fences, based on their visibility to racehorses’.

This mirrors the situation in two other major jumps racing jurisdictions, Britain and France, with British point-to-point racing having made the switch in 2022.

Horse Racing Ireland had previously stated that Irish racing would be converted to white markings on hurdles and fences by the end of 2025.

Separately, a new rule has been introduced this season that will prevent a rider who is also a handler from riding in a race against a horse that they train, unless the horse that they are riding is also a horse that they train.

Rob James and Derek O’Connor, two riders who finished in the top six nationally in the standings last season, are among the most high-profile riders impacted by the rule change.

The pair both rode in races last season for an outside handler against horses that they themselves trained, something which will not be possible going forward this term. Earlier this year, the case of Olive Nicholls, the daughter of trainer Paul Nicholls, received some media attention in Britain when she rode against a horse that she trained in a hunter chase at Taunton. However, under the BHA rules, their limitations on jockeys riding in races that feature horses they also train do not apply to the amateur division of the sport in hunter chases.

This new ruling for Irish point-to-points will surely provide both James and O’Connor with something of a headache as they continue to successfully combine both roles.

The IHRB has also elected to relax its directive regarding the start time of fixtures in the spring. Last season, committees could not start a fixture later than 1pm, a change that surprised many committees. This modification has been amended for this season, and committees racing in April or May 2026 will now have the option of starting up to 2pm.

THE new season gets underway without Mikey O’Connor, who tragically passed away just four weeks out from action in the pointing sphere resuming.

He was an ever-present figure within the weigh-tent at point-to-point fixtures for a number of decades, particularly on the Cork-Waterford circuit, with his tally of winners in the sphere surpassing the 400-mark across 26 years. A tough competitor, he had to overcome significant injuries throughout his career, which has led many to describe him as the ‘iron man of point-to-pointing’.

A three-time regional champion in the south, having triumphed in several titanic end-of-season battles with Derek O’Connor, Mikey registered a 429th and final victory within the sphere aboard Joe Daly’s Ebenezer Scrooge in an older maiden at Ballyvodock in February.

That leaves Mikey in fifth position on the all-time winners list within the point-to-point ranks, a position crafted over a quarter of a century.