Winged Leader attempts 70-year-old pointing record tomorrow Winged Leader bids to equal a 70-year-old point-to-pointing record this weekend, with his trainer David Christie counting down the hours to Saturday’s Necarne fixture. An agonising runner-up when caught in the closing strides of Cheltenham’s St. James's Place Festival Challenge Cup in 2022, Winged Leader has been racing exclusively ‘between the flags’ in recent years and bagged 10 wins this season. Last autumn, Christie targetted a record set by Still William, who registered 33 wins in the 1950s, and todate, 11-year-old Winged Leader has managed 32, with his latest being on April 21. Ahead of a big weekend, Christie reports "he runs in Necarne in Fermanagh on Saturday: I’m not nervous but just wish it was over. Every day people are asking me about him and, for this type of racing, he is a once in a lifetime horse. “He is in good form, has had an easy enough three weeks since his last win and Barry O’Neill rides on Saturday. “The way things are and with the way the ground is going, there isn’t too much left for him but I’m just taking it one day at a time, and if it doesn’t happen on Saturday, we’ll just have to wait longer.” He added “he is very tough, has the heart of a lion and has stayed in one piece, which means you can train him all the time. He loves his racing, is very game and even if he gets a hard race, he is up and ready for another fight two days later. “I’m sure there’ll be a reasonable turn out to see him although Necarne competes with the North West 200 (motorcycle road race) this weekend. “There’s also a good chance he will be leading point-to-point horse again this year and if he was, he’d be the first to do back-to-back wins.” Trained by Flat jockey Declan McDonogh's grandfather John Bryce Smith, Still William holds the record with 33 point-to-point wins, followed by a pair of P P Hogan-trained horses from the 1980s Under Way, with 30, and Ah Whisht’s 29. Gus O'Brien’s Corryvreckan also registered 29 while, more recently, Eugene O’Sullivan’s Arctic Times won 28 times in the 2000s.
