About Point To Point Racing
What is Point to Point?
Point-to-Point racing is an amateur version of National Hunt racing or the Steeplechase. The name Point-to-Point refers to the points of the church steeples that the horses used to follow during a race.
Our Course
Parham racecourse in West Sussex is home to one of the great point-to-point courses where there has been racing for the last 65 years. It is a stones throw from Angmering, the birthplace of ‘Black Tom’ Thomas Olliver one of steeplechasings most colourful and earliest characters.
One of 16 children, a jockey from the age of six, one of seventeen riders in the first official Grand National in 1839, rode in a record 19 Nationals and a winner of three Nationals in the 1840s and 1850s. He was a classic rogue and if he was here today he would be trackside or in the bar. We are delighted to carry on the traditions of the earliest form of racing.
“Sometimes he means it and I don’t, sometimes I means it and he don’t but today we both mean it.”
— Black Tom to the owner of veteran horse Peter Simple before going on to win the National 1853
We hope today that all our horses and riders mean it. Good Luck!