BRINGING HOME THE SILVERWARE ON A DAY FREE OF FEAR

Thirteen days ago, a mixed round of jumping by Grangeclare Diego at Charm Park had culminated in Paddy Barlow's unseat five from home and, you'll recall, a mammoth delay whilst medical services attended to the unconscious jockey amid a hushed and concerned atmosphere.

Fast forward to today, and here we all are watching the same Grangeclare Diego swagger into the winner's enclosure at the Hurworth point-to-point at Hutton Rudby, having not touched a twig all the way round under the same Paddy Barlow.

A quite extraordinary example of pointing's perpetual gift for effecting turnrounds in fortunes, this; one mirrored further by Buster Valentine, on whom Paddy had won 35 minutes before his Charm Park spill, decking him 35 minutes after today's victory (rider thankfully unscathed this time).

Points of interest were not hard to find on a day when two-thirds of the horses that could have turned up thankfully did, and the rain that also could have turned up politely waited until the final race was concluded.

Isobel MacTaggart and Katriona Brown recorded first career riding successes, whilst John Dawson dug deep to secure the opener on Mount Mews as if the previous day's exertions at Cheltenham had taken nothing out of him.

The Hurworth qualified Sine Nomine was, to the best of my knowledge, nowhere to be seen. The magnificent cup she won, however, was. Yesterday's victory was very much one by, for, and to be enjoyed and shared with, Yorkshire pointing.

A final observation. In a chat with the excellent Mike Crolla between commentaries, we recalled that the 2020 renewal of this fixture had fallen just three days before the entire country was placed in lockdown (indeed, this was my first return visit since).

The atmosphere that day had been tangibly shot through with a sense of sadness, uncertainty and - if we're all honest about it - fear of a kind I'd never sensed on a racetrack before, and perhaps never will again.

That it has been possible to renew my acquaintance with Skutterskelfe Park liberated from any such foreboding has given me more pleasure today than I am perhaps able to convey adequately here. May we all live long before our sport experiences anything similar or the same once more.

WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEENS, AND WHAT THANKFULLY WEREN'T

If anyone were still uncertain as to why some pointing fixtures in this part of the world try to raise skiploads of money for the Yorkshire Air Ambulance service every year, the rapid scrambling of its helicopter to aid the stricken Paddy Barlow at this afternoon's Yorkshire Area Jockeys point-to-point fixture at Charm Park ought to have put the matter beyond doubt.

With the tragic recent passing of Keagan Kirkby at Charing still fresh in the mind, anyone could have been forgiven as the minutes ticked by for fearing serious injury had befallen Paddy following his unseating from Grangeclare Diego in the Restricted. The news this evening, mercifully, is broadly positive.

Just thirty-five minutes earlier Paddy had enjoyed victory aboard the Milburns' new recruit Buster Valentine in the Mens Open. Only an hour before that, William Brown had somehow escaped unscathed from a horror incident in which he'd been dragged over 100 yards along the ground, foot still trapped in stirrup.

Such are the vacillations of fate in a sport we all love but need ultimately concede will forever remain untameable, all safety measures notwithstanding.

The afternoon's dramas inevitably resulted in delays, and the concluding contest was run under a sky containing more deep purple than the heavy metal racks at [insert name of surviving high street music store here].

It could have been run at 2am with headlights mounted on the horses for all connections of Duke Account minded, however, the brave homebred emerging on top in a four-way go to add an Intermediate to previous gains for stalwart local owner Charles Brader and family.

(Whether critical to the outcome or not, the jockey on runner-up Fire In Her Eyes may appreciate another go at riding the final 20 yards or so. No more need be said).

A word at this point for Charlotte Russell, one of Charles Brader's daughters, the brains and public face of Go Racing in Yorkshire's many highly effective marketing campaigns under Rules, and - as was again evident at Charm Park today - the absolute gold standard by which all point-to-point meeting announcers should be judged. Only sometime Midlands counterpart Felicity Vero has come close in recent years.

Another Charlotte caught up with on a visit back up north was Charlotte Fuller, wife of Richard (also present) and mother of top jockey Page (elsewhere). Cue much reminiscing over the much-missed Hackwood Park, where I more or less had a residency as racereader from 2007-11 and where the curation of an excellent racing surface often met with less reward in terms of runners than was strictly fair.

The Fullers were also happy to provide an update on their former mainstay Moscow Blaze, recipient of a retirement rather less eventful than a racing career punctuated by, among many incidents, a fractured skull and an adder bite which temporarily turned one leg to mush. I'm not sure what gods racehorses have to upset to meet with such mishap, but Moscow evidently narked them all.