The 2000-2001 National Hunt season splutters to a finish at a run-of-the-mill midweek fixture in Clonmel this evening but a Turf Club spokesman admitted yesterday there are no plans to change the jumping format.
To make the end of term seemingly even more confusingly low-key, there will be a leading trainer for the past 12 months and a champion trainer.
Willie Mullins will be able to use the "champion trainer" tag, based on a total prizemoney dividend of close on £850,000, while Noel Meade has secured the "leading trainer" label for having trained a total of 60 winners as opposed to Mullins's 51.
There is no award for the top winning percentage, but it is significant that Edward O'Grady's total of 48 winners means he can boast a success rateof well over 20 per cent.
Ruby Walsh will end the season as top rider for the second time in his career. Currently his 84 winners puts him seven ahead of last season's champion, Barry Geraghty, while Philip Fenton is the top amateur again, going into this evening with 29 winners.
A remarkably successful run-in has seen Kieran Kelly pick up the claiming riders' title with 31 winners. Even after a season that was so curtailed by the foot-and-mouth crisis, it still seems an anti-climax to end on such a fixture as this evening's, and it's almost appropriate the best bet could be a good class jumping prospect who is hoping to pick up some useful money on the flat.
Dermot Weld had been thinking of the Cheltenham Festival bumper for Direct Bearing when the horse won his bumper at Fairyhouse in January, and although we haven't seen him since, the Michael Smurfit-owned runner looks a bet in the two-mile maiden.
The country's top flat trainer Aidan O'Brien can revert to his jumping roots for the Nenagh Hurdle, where the disappointing Darapour is unopposable considering he is a stone clear on ratings.
Philip Fenton can finish the season with a bang, however, as he is a significant booking for Michael Hourigan's Four On The Trot in the bumper. A ninth to Moores Light in a reasonable bumper at Listowel in September indicated some talent in the horse and Fenton is just the man to get it out.
