AMID the ongoing suspension of point-to-point racing here, Cheltenham 2021 could scarcely have provided a more timely platform to showcase the importance of this great sector with a record breaking 13 races won by horses who started their careers in the point-to-point fields across the length and breadth of the country.

When the two juvenile hurdles are excluded from an analysis of the week’s performances, that winning haul takes in half of all the races that were run across the four days, a fact that is even more impressive when it is considered that pointing graduates accounted for just under 30% of runners. That is an impressive ratio by any standards.

Top level

Most striking perhaps was the impact of former point-to-pointers at the very top level among the 13 Grade 1 races that they were eligible to compete in.

Here they won no fewer than nine of these races including championship races over distances from two miles up to the Gold Cup trip of three and a quarter miles.

Novices’ chases

Last year’s clean sweep of all three Grade 1 novice hurdles was repeated and extended to also include a further monopoly on all of the Grade 1 prizes in the novice chase division too, where for the first time the field for a Grade 1 contest at the Cheltenham Festival was made up entirely with horses that began their careers in a maiden point-to-point, that race being the Grade 1 Brown Advisory Novices’ Chase.

When you add into the mix that the Grade 1 Champion Bumper was won by a point-to-point graduate for the third year in succession, you quickly see a picture of domination within the younger age divisions.

That is the result of the sheer quality of horses that has been produced from within point-to-pointing in the last three years and there is no doubt that it has reached an all-time high.

It is no coincidence that with the exception of Colreevy, the remaining 12 point-to-point winners at the Cheltenham Festival had all last run between the flags within the past three years.

Eleven of these had won their maidens, Belfast Banter having finished second in an Oldcastle four-year-old maiden, with all bar Minella Indo having done so at the age of four.

Previous festivals have highlighted the depth of these younger age maidens – be it the Ballinaboola maiden won by Envoi Allen or the Stowlin contest that Monkfish had opened his account in by finishing in front of Fury Road, Fiddlerontheroof and Chantry House, and this year’s edition was no different.

Winning maidens

Those racegoers at Tattersalls in December 2018 would have seen two Cheltenham Festival winners Chantry House and Mount Ida winning their four-year-old maidens on the same afternoon, with a similar feat at Dromahane earlier that same year when Appreciate It and Minella Indo were victorious.

Vanillier and Oscar Elite who were first and fifth in the same maiden at that venue last season, then led home a one-two for pointers in the Albert Bartlett, highlighting the calibre of horses currently waiting to get a run against each other once the much-needed go ahead is given for point-to-pointing to resume.