Back in October, before the start of the 2023/2024 point-to-point and Hunter Chase season, the Jumping For Fun website – via its message board, “The Pointing Forum”, a favoured haunt of the point-to-point community – announced its intention to embark on a second campaign of Hunter Chase sponsorship.
The team, lead by Gordon Phillips and including Jumping for Fun founder Dom Bradshaw, and “forumites” Mark Elliott, Charlotte Fuller and Bob Mackenzie crowdsourced enough funding from supporters of the sport last year to sponsor four races, at Fakenham, Leicester and two at Stratford (winner Kaproyale pictured above), including one at its showcase end of season evening fixture.
With the launch of this season’s fundraising initiative, Gordon announced their intention of sponsoring at least as many races as they did in 2023/2024, and confirmed that every penny received would go directly into race sponsorship – meaning that the more money donated, the more races would be sponsored.
Gordon admits to being delighted to announce that a grand total of SEVEN Hunter Chases will be sponsored under the Jumping for Fun banner this season, as follows:
Ludlow 7th February (race transferred from abandoned fixture on 18th January)
Leicester 15th February (Dick Saunders Memorial)
Taunton 20th February
Catterick 6th March
Hexham 22nd April
Fakenham 7th May (David Turner Trophy)
Stratford 31st May (Restricted Final)
Gordon said about the 2023/2024 season sponsorship, “The members of The Forum and beyond have given us the opportunity to almost double the amount of races we are able to sponsor this year and – as a Team – we are very grateful to everyone for their donations.
He added, “Once again, all the courses have been very supportive and we could not achieve this much without their help. We are so pleased to have got such a good geographical spread, giving all those who donated the chance to attend, and is my personal intention to go to all this year’s races.”
The first Jumping For Fun race is at Ludlow tomorrow and Forum members have the added bonus of a pre-racing discussion with outgoing Point-to-Point Authority Chief Executive Peter Wright, offering the chance to air their views and pose questions about the future of the sport after his retirement.
As well as offering ten free entry tickets to Forum members for the racing, Ludlow have kindly provided the Plymouth Box for the afternoon for the use of all those attending.
The race itself has attracted five declarations, headed on form by Tea Clipper, a recent second at Warwick (whereJobsonfire unseated soon after halfway) when long odds-on. Miss Seagreen is the only winning Hunter Chase in the field, but has not raced since scoring at Cheltenham in May, Shang Tang ran well when third at Hereford and Captain Tommy should come on for his Alnwick fourth.
Jake Exelby
South Midlands Area Press Officer