Biddick makes record score
Britain’s record score for wins in the sport of point-to-pointing has been broken today (Saturday by Will Biddick.
He needed two successes to beat the 414 winners achieved by Shropshire’s Richard Burton until his retirement in 2011. Biddick, 32, who lives in Somerset, rode at the Devon meeting of Upcott Cross and notched two victories on Crown of Thorns and Kernel Victor. Kernel Victor owned by Ed Walker and John Pearn having previously been owned by the late Ray Targett and his wife Evelyn and this was the horse’s ninth career victory trained by Ed Walker.
It was, in April 2004, that Biddick rode his first winner at Stafford Cross, Devon. Born in Cornwall, the son of a farmer who trained point-to-pointers, he later moved to Herefordshire to work for trainer Venetia Williams, and while there rode a winner at the 2009 Cheltenham Festival on Something Wells.
A few days later he finished runner-up in the Midlands Grand National on the Williams-trained Flintoff and opted to try his hand as a conditional (professional) jockey, but battles with the scales meant he soon switched back to amateur status and a return to point-to-pointing (where the weights carried are generally higher).
He finished third in the 2010/11 men’s championship to Burton, and from that point established his own hold over the title, winning it for six years in a row from 2011/12 to 2016/17. During much of that time he was riding for the powerful Dorset yard of Richard Barber, and then that trainer’s grandson, Somerset-based Jack.
Biddick had to give best to new Foran Equine men’s champion Alex Edwards in 2017/18, and the two riders are now involved in another battle for the championship, which Shropshire-based Edwards now leads 28 to 27.
Other career highlights for Biddick include a score of 68 point-to-point wins in 2014/15, easily a British record for victories in one season, and a success in Ireland’s prestigious Champion Hunters’ Chase at Punchestown (2018 on Caid Du Berlais). He also finished second in the 2006 Fulke Walwyn Kim Muir Chase at the Cheltenham Festival on Mon Mome, one month before landing a handicap chase on the same horse at Aintree. Three years later Mon Mome won the Grand National under jockey Liam Treadwell.
