IT was heartening to see Kruzhlinin attempting to win two open races in two days even though he ended up meeting a proper horse when going down to Some Are Lucky at Fairyhouse.

With a month of racing still to come, it is likely that these two horses along with the mare Longhouse Music (who had a walkover and a win last weekend) will all be attempting to be crowned leading point-to-pointer on the basis of number of races won.

What a pity that none of these ultra-consistent horses were entered to contest the champion hunter chase.

Of course, it is only in recent years that horses have been allowed to win more than four open races in the same season – one of the by-products of the foot and mouth outbreak which brought the introduction of the autumn racing.

With what is now affectively an eight-month season, Kruzhlinin’s new record of nine wins is eminently beatable. I can recall many multiple winners in Britain where no restrictions applied (most of the time) during my early year. One I think of particularly, which like Gordon Elliott’s charge, came into pointing at the age of 12 after a successful earlier career on the track was ther former hurdler Atom Bomb.

This was a horse who only really showed his true colours as a 14-year-old in 1958.

In that year the season ran from February 15th to May 17th and Atom Bomb did not make his seasonal reappearance until March 8th. He ran 12 times winning seven opens and three other races. However, the most interesting events of that tally came at the very end of the season.

BEAT HIS RIVALS

On May 10th at the Minehead & West Somerset meeting, his home fixture, he ran in the first race, the hunt members’ race, and duly beat his two rivals by a distance.

With 40 minutes between races his owner/rider was back in time to declare the horse for the next race.

He duly won that too and it should be pointed out that the eight-length runner-up had won the open race on the same course a week previously. Of course in these days of horse welfare issues this would no longer be allowed.

To complete the story of that season, seven days later he made the long journey to Worcestershire, no motorways in those days, to contest the Lady Dudley Cup which was run in three divisions.

Atom Bomb was beaten into third, only two lengths away from the winner, in a highly competitive division

We can say for sure that they don’t make them like that anymore but time changes and we have to move on.