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Healy Racing photography and Richard Pugh share their passion and knowledge of Ireland’s unique point-to-point horse racing scene. Steeplechasing began in Ireland in 1752. Today the sport of point-to-pointing is thriving as a favourite rural pursuit and is for many their first experience of horse racing. At hundreds of pop-up races around the country dramas are played out, and horses, such as Best Mate and Honeysuckle, and riders, including Derek O’Connor, Jamie Codd, Davy Russell and Rachael Blackmore, begin their glittering careers. This new book celebrates the origins of Point to Point racing, the courses countrywide, the horses, the riders, the handlers, and the grassroots of Irish racing.
Racing photographer supremo Pat ‘Cash’ Healy is known to many in the horse-racing world. His father, Liam senior, began the family horse-racing photography business in the 1970s, and today Pat Healy and the other members of the Healy Racing team, including his sister Cathy, brother Liam, his nephews, Kevin and Sean, and his son, Jack, are all involved in the business. From following trainers, horses, owners and jockeys, Healy Racing has captured thousands of precious moments in the great sport of horse racing.
Richard Pugh rode as an amateur rider in the mid-1990s and enjoyed a career highlight in the 1995 Ladies Cup at the Punchestown Festival. He has been commentating at point-to-points and on the racecourse since 1997. In 2003 he set up Irish Point to Point Services Ltd, with its website p2p.ie, providing services to the industry, such as results, reports, ratings and photographs. Richard is also closely involved with the sale of point-to-point horses, being a director of Tattersalls Ireland, and his wife, Jennifer, is the Senior Medical Officer of the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board (IHRB) and was Lady Champion point-to-point rider in 2009.