Horse Racing (Amateur)

While the term amateur horse racing can be applied to any horse race that is not governed by professional organizations, it is applied specifically to a certain type of horse racing generally conducted in Britain, Ireland, and France. In that sense it is most commonly referred to as point-to-point, or steeplechase, racing. Currently there are approximately 120 of these races that are run in Britain, with others run in Ireland, where amateur horse racing and hunting are both very popular. The races are strictly regulated, as are the jockeys, through organizations such as the British Amateur Jockey's Association.

The first time this kind of race was mentioned in print was in 1793. There are, however, references to exactly this type of racing dating back to the early 1750s in Ireland, when two horses were raced on a 4.5-mile course. This course had fences, water, and other obstacles that the horses and riders had to clear. Of course, in practice, this type of racing may go back earlier than that, and the kind of course was very similar to the terrain over which fox hunts were conducted. To this day, there is a very strong tie between amateur racing and hunting, especially in how their respective seasons occur at different times of the year.

The early races were run cross country over a course from one town to another—a practice that still exists. Church steeples were the targets (they were easy to spot) for the racers to go after and were the “points” referred to in the term point-to-point. As the riders were racing from one steeple to another, the term stee-plechasing came into use. The terms steeplechase and point-to-point were often used interchangeably but have now come to mean two different things. Steeple-chasing (which is the older of the terms) is now a race on a circular course that contains water, ditches, and fences over which the horses must jump. The idea, which started to become popular in the early 19th century, is to replicate a cross country course with streams or other bodies of water and the necessity to jump over fences. The most famous of the steeplechases in Britain is the Grand National, which has been in existence since 1836. Point-to-point is still used to describe a race run on a cross country course.

The horses in steeplechasing and point-to-point were, and are, the same as those used for fox hunting. Steeplechase and point-to-point racing were considered to be an excellent way to keep horses in shape in winter, [Page 305]when fox hunting was not in season. The course was set on the same type of terrain that fox hunting was conducted. Amateur horse racing increased in popularity through the early to late 19th century and into the early 20th century in the years before World War I. Siegfried Sassoon's partially autobiographical novel Memoirs of a Fox Hunting Man, part of the George Sherston novels, describes in a personal way the lives of the country set in those years as well as details about fox hunts and point-to-point competition.

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