MANY congratulations to event rider and Meath Pony Club member Timmy Love who, on his first mount in a point-to-point, won the older horses’ maiden for novice riders at the Ballymacad Foxhounds’ meeting near Oldcastle last Sunday.

The 17-year-old was on board Damut I’m Out who, having hit the front two fences from home, was left clear when the even-money favourite, The Bright Cherry, ran out through the wing of the final fence.

The winner is trained by Ciaran Murphy, twin brother of international event rider Joseph.

The rider’s big support team included his parents, Mickey and Sarah, sister Holly, brother Matthew, aunt Melanie Love and his two grandmothers, Diana Connolly and Dot Love. He rides out for Dot and Ciaran at weekends and during the school holidays, as he did for Gordon Elliott for about a year. He has had two rides in bumpers.

On Sunday, the Ballymacads celebrated 40 years of racing at their lovely track at Newcastle, Oldcastle and Dot recalled riding at that fixture on Sunday, February 20th, 1977 when she finished fourth in the ladies’ Grand National.

Although Timmy has yet to compete in an event this season, he hasn’t given up that discipline and has a few young horses to come out later in the year. On Monday, he and Dot competed in the novice pairs’ competition at the Longford hunter trials after which he returned home to cheer on former Meath Pony Club member Robert Power and Our Duke in the Irish Grand National, a race in which Dot trained the 2013 winner Liberty Counsel.

Holly now rides Cloughreagh Charlie, on whom Timmy finished fifth in the pony international at Tattersalls last year, and they are the ‘guinea pigs’ for the dressage phase of that class next month.