Tom Ellis puts down significant marker as he bids for fifth straight trainers' championship

While Willie Mullins was landing eight races at the Dublin Racing Festival, a similar feat of excellence at a lower level was being rolled out on Britain’s point-to-point circuit.

Warwickshire’s Tom Ellis sent out 13 runners last weekend and trained ten winners under five riders. His yard did not engage full throttle until Christmas, yet he has won 26 races from 49 runners (53 per cent) and seems assured of a fifth successive Foran Equine trainers’ championship.

Others have enjoyed similar, briefer spells of success, but you sense Ellis is moving into the realms achieved by East Anglian Joe Turner in the 1970s and 80s, and Dorset’s Richard Barber in the 1990s and noughties. Turner raced his own horses for his children to ride, while Ellis has followed Barber in attracting a wide sphere of owners to a successful yard.