David Mansell has been riding point-to-pointers for almost 25 years, so when he says a horse is worth an each-way bet it’s worth taking note.

The 53-year-old jockey will ride Red Inca in the Brian Babbage Memorial Open Hunters’ Chase (5.10pm) - the first race of the Hunter Chase Evening meeting at Cheltenham on Friday.

It’s trained by Broadway handler Con Rutledge and Mansell reckons the horse has got more than half a chance.

“He’s definitely worth an each-way bet,” he said. “I’ve ridden him a couple of times and he’s got something.

“The first time was at Siddington. I didn’t push him too hard but he still finished fifth. Three out he was going really well but he blew up at the last.

“Then at Paxford on Easter Monday he was going really well until he ploughed through the fence four from home but still came second to Green Winter who is an out and out stayer.”

Friday’s opening race will be run over two miles and Mansell added: “I think he’ll go very, very close. He’s got a bit about him and he’s very quick over fences.

“Mind you, he’ll need to be because they don’t hang about in two-milers round Cheltenham.”

Mansell, with almost 200 point-to-point winners to his name, is well qualified when it comes to assessing horses.

He is a regular at Cheltenham Racecourse’s end-of-season spectacular for amateur riders and the past six years has ridden Swallow’s Delight for his trainer wife Julie.

Sadly, the two-mile specialist sustained a life-ending injury at Cottenham Park in Cambridgeshire on New Year’s Eve. It means Julie does not have a runner this time around but her husband’s presence in the first race should at least go some way to softening the blow.

Mansell has ridden two doubles and had six winners in total at the home of National Hunt racing.

This year is the first time that the meeting has been held on a Friday evening but you soon get the impression from talking to Mansell that he would ride at the meeting even if it was held at 2 o’clock in the morning.

“I love the meeting,” he said. “It’s our Wembley. All our friends go and all our hunting mates. It’s a proper local meeting.”

Mansell, who was introduced to point-to-pointing in his late 20s and thought “I’ll have some of that”, reckons he’s ridden 12 times at the Hunter Chase Evening meeting but he has also taken part in the Foxhunter Chase during the Cheltenham Festival.

That does not have such good memories for Mansell though. “It was the worst result of my career,” he said. “I was riding a horse called Beauchamp Oracle and he just decided to unseat me.”

There are plenty of ups and downs in racing, of course, but Mansell is not ready to ride off into the sunset as far as his racing career is concerned.

“I’m not ready to retire yet,” he said. “I love competing. A very good friend of mine, Dai Jones, a prolific point-to-pointer from South Wales, told me not to retire until you’ve got to.

“I didn’t start until I was 29 and I’ve had so much fun since then. I’ve finished second in the riders’ national title and won the Hunter Chase title.”

While he’s clocked up the wins - 197 in total - he’s also clocked up the rides. He thinks he’s ridden in something like 2,500 races and added: “It’s a bit of sacrifice but it’s what I do.

“I consider myself a horseman rather than a jockey and I get on well with quirky horses. Put it this way, no one is rocking up and offering me Denman or Kauto Star to ride.”

Mansell, who lives in Hasfield, near Tirley, runs an equine paddock business but admits it costs him money to ride in point-to-points.

However, it won’t be financial considerations that persuade him to give up racing but the voice of reason that is his wife Julie.

“Once she tells me to stop that will be it,” he said. “If she says to me ‘that’s the first time you didn’t give it a ride’ I know it will be time to retire.”

Mansell, of course, hopes that day is still a long way off and it is obvious that he is still as much in love with the sport as he was when he rode his first winner back in the 1990s.

“It’s like a travelling circus,” he said. “We all meet up at the weekends and race. The valets are like surrogate fathers. We come in all smashed to bits and can’t get our clothes off and they have to sort us out.”

So, what about that first winner?

“That was on Miss Efficient at Whitwick Manor,” he said. “I was out in front but I was very inexperienced. I don’t know how I won and thought I must be going the wrong way!”

Mansell hasn’t taken too many wrong turns in the last few years.

“Julie is the greatest mum and wife in the world,” he said. “And I’ve got two fantastic children, Molly, who is four, and three-year-old Lily.”

Molly already has her own pony so if dad has his way there could be another Mansell lining up at Cheltenham in the not too distant future.