Change to sales catalogue data is welcome but it is also a very Irish solution

Following many years of industry discussion, the International Cataloguing Standards Committee this week revealed its solution for the listing of point-to-point form in National Hunt sales catalogues. 

During the 1970s point-to-point racing had equal status to the track for a brief period, but there has been an anomaly on all sales catalogues for more than 40 years, which has now been addressed. Heretofore, a mare who had bred one runner which had just one run in a point-to-point was described in a sales catalogue as dam of a runner, but even if that one runner had won the mare was not considered to be the dam of a winner. That was unfair to both the mare and the breeder. 

The mare was losing out irrespective of the performance as she was allocated a runner once her progeny ran in a point, but it could never be considered a winner.