St. James’s Place Festival Challenge Cup Open Hunters’ Chase

BOOKMAKERS were spared another devastating result in the Festival Hunters’ Chase when Sine Nomine, trained by Catterick Racecourse’s clerk of the course Fiona Needham, got the better of strongly-supported 11/8 favourite It’s On The Line close home in a gripping finish.

The 8/1 winner, ridden by John Dawson, was writing another memorable chapter in Needham’s association with this race as it was 22 years ago that she won the same contest as a jockey aboard Last Option, who was trained by her father Robin Tate. Both horses won in Tate’s silks.

“That’s a dream come true, and what a ride he gave her,” said Needham.

“My only instruction was to save a bit for up the hill but I couldn’t have been that calm. I thought we were beaten going to the last, but boy did she pick up. She’s a star.

“I thought if she was third she’d have run a very good race, and that was where I thought she was going to finish, but then she picked up.”

Dawson added: “I think I have ridden her in every race she’s run in, from her very first start, and she’s always given me that little bit of something else. For Yorkshire and the northern point-to-point circuit to have someone like that flying that flag, and to prove that British point-to-points can produce top-level horses is fantastic.”

A near miss for It’s On The Line, trained by Emmet Mullins and recently acquired by J.P. McManus, meant that jockey Derek O’Connor went agonisingly close to his own piece of history as he was denied the clean sweep of the three amateur races at the Festival in the same year.