The West Midland Area will stage 14 meetings during the 2020/2021 season. Andoversford, Didmarton, Paxford, Knightwick, Shelfield Park and Woodford run one fixture while Maisemore Park stages three meetings and Chaddesley Corbett hosts five Point-to-Points.
MESSAGE FROM THE P.P.A.
In the light of the Prime Minister’s Announcement, we of course are calling a pause to the point to point season from today (4th January). Whilst I know that many of you would have liked to press on, and indeed the sport remains inherently safe, we cannot claim that we are acting in a vacuum. The national situation is worsening, and that means amongst other things that the availability of medical assets is no longer assured. Even if those could be guaranteed, there is the likelihood of waits at hospitals for injured jockeys, and racing having to be stopped due to lack of ambulances on course.
We also have to take into account the workload put upon the volunteers who run the meetings, the level of which may not be apparent to many of you. We are hugely grateful for their willingness to take on the enormous amount of work and stress that they have gone through to try to put on the meetings so far, and the occasional cancellation has not been due to lack of effort. However, this has reached intolerable levels over the past few weeks, and cannot continue.
Instead, we have decided to go for a clean break with the hope of restarting on weekend February 20/21, based on the government Tier Review on February 10. This will at least allow you to plan with some surety. Please do keep the faith. Whilst there are several dynamics currently working against the country, these will play out, whilst others, such as vaccination programmes and the weather, will move in our favour. As such we believe that we can still have a good season all things being equal. To put things in perspective that will leave 19 racing weekends until the end of the season during which over two thirds of the normal fixture list would normally run.
Rest assured that we are doing everything possible to ensure our sport will be in a great space to get going again in a safe and secure manner, which is acceptable to us all. Please keep checking the website for further updates.
IF THE SEASON DOES RESTART ON THE WEEKEND OF 20TH/21ST FEBRUARY OUR
NEXT SCHEDULED MEETING
DUKE OF BEAUFORT – DIDMARTON
SATURDAY 6TH MARCH
FIRST RACE – 12.30 A.M.
In line with the Government guidance for elite sports grounds and until further notice, admission to racecourses will be limited to participants, racehorse owners and essential raceday personnel only (although this can differ depending on local authority guidance). All attendees will need to observe the existing strict health and safety protocols outlined by the BHA and local and national government (see article published on 16th October).
E-Ticketing is available for most fixtures. Identify which fixture you wish to attend and click the link on the appropriate page.
The site is constantly updated with going reports from each course, plus previews, results and reviews
from individual meetings. It is run on behalf of the West Midland Point-to-Point Secretaries Association – the views expressed by the Website Editor do not reflect the views of the Association. Every effort is made to ensure the information published on this site is both factual and correct but if any mistakes are made they will be rectified as soon as possible.
