The clocks changing along with Hallowe’en on Sunday can mean only one thing – the Jump season proper is back! Of course, if you’re a regular at Carlisle you’ll know that was a little white lie and it was fantastic to see so many familiar faces at our first two Jump meetings earlier this month.

It proved to be a wonderful day and we were once again joined by our friends at Rachael Bell Wealth Management, who have been such fantastic supporters of the racecourse over the years.

The company supports some really worthwhile causes in the local area and this year’s beneficiary was the Rock Youth Project, which supports children and young people. Based just a stone’s throw from us, the project will be putting all funds raised towards a new pavilion and as usual lots of worthwhile funds were raised for another tremendous charity.

Since our last update, we have also bid farewell to a fantastic summer of Flat racing with a pulsating season finale here in September. As usual, the battle to be crowned as top jockey and top trainer went down to the wire and a huge congratulations must go to Callum Rodriguez (7-41) and Mark Johnston (8-27), who were crowned as this year’s respective champions. Honours for top owner stayed very close to home with Arthur Slack coming out on top due to his three-time winner Detective. The son of Kingman is trained by his daughter, Hackthorpe-based Diane Sayer.

It’s been such a pleasure to see racegoers back at Carlisle this summer enjoying things like Cumberland Plate Day and our Ladies Evening with Radio 1 DJ Scott Mills and hopefully it served as a taster for things to come this winter.

If you’re a regular at Carlisle Racecourse, you’ll know that we don’t do things by half measures and we jump straight into things with our big jumps race day of the year this Sunday, which is headlined by the Listed Colin Parker Memorial Intermediate Chase. A record 15 entries have been received for the 2021 renewal including Chantry House, a Grade One winner at both the Cheltenham and Aintree Festivals as well as another Grade One Aintree scorer, Ahoy Senor, from the Scottish yard of Lucinda Russell.

This is a race which has gone from strength to strength over the past 15 years or so and we’re very proud to host a race which has become a recognised platform for chasing stars of the future. Don’t believe me?

Future winners of each of the Grand National (Many Clouds), the Betfair Chase (Lostintranslation), the Ascot Chase (Waiting Patiently and Cyrname) and the Melling Chase (Monet’s Garden) have learned the ropes here in that time to name just a few and we can’t wait to see who will be next off the production line. The supporting card has a habit of throwing up some nice winners too, meaning Sunday’s meeting really isn’t one to be missed.

While we would never dream of showing any bias, it was fantastic to see Brian Hughes hit the ground running with a couple of winners at our Jump season opener. We very much look after our own in the north and to see a northern-based jockey hold such a commanding lead at the top of the jockey’s championship at the time of writing can only be a good thing. There’s a long way to go, but it would be no surprise to see Brian amongst the winners once again on Sunday!

We encourage all racegoers to purchase their ticket in advance from our website and to find out all the information about the evening, head to our website www.thejockeyclub.co.uk/carlisle