As owners and handlers await the resumption of the point-to-point season, additional hunter certificates continue to be registered for horses ahead of their first outings of the campaign.
An additional 176 horses received hunter certificates this week ranging from the 13-year-old Festival Opera, whose connections are no doubt eyeing up the spring cross-county races for him, to a total of 86 four-year-old’s.
This is the time of the year when the focus begins to turn to the new crop of horses that will be featuring in the four-year-old maidens, and a number of handlers are readying themselves for the resumption of racing by completing the hunter certificate process for their latest recruits.
Reigning champion Colin Bowe has hunter certed 35 horses this week, the majority of which will run in his familiar Milestone Bloodstock colours.
Fellow Wexford handler Denis Murphy was not far behind him as 34 of the four-year-old’s that he has in training for the 2021 campaign received hunter certificates this week.
The start of the new year of four-year-old maidens typically draws notable attention from breeders and at this early stage it is Solider Of Fortune who has the strongest representation among the four-year-old horses with hunter certificates, with both Bowe and Murphy responsible for the majority of them.
In a further sign of the numbers of four-year-old’s to come through at this early stage, over 260 four-year-old’s have also just been named in the January 14 and January 21 editions of the Horse Racing Ireland calendar.
