THE National Hunt Jockeys' Championship has settled into the competitive affair that many fans hoped with both Tony McCoy and Richard Johnson battling hard for every win.

Both were in action at Hereford when McCoy moved seven wins ahead after victory on Mondial Jack.

Madley-born Johnson was sent off the 11/10 favourite aboard the Phillip Hobbs trained Double Honour in the second division of the two-mile three-furlong Novice Chase.

But although they had every chance over the final two fences, it was Mondial Jack who battled on strongly to score by a length and a quarter, with Historic depriving Double Honour by a length and a half.

Johnson had been lucky to escape injury an hour earlier in the first division of the Novice Chase when his mount Under the Sand rolled on the Herefordshire jockey when falling at the second-last fence.

The win of Mondial Jack for trainer Martin Pipe was a welcome tonic for the champion trainer as half an hour earlier the stewards had fined him £1,100 over the running and riding of his horse Yourman in the Juvenile Hurdle.

Partnered by amateur Tom Malone, Yourman, who was sent off a 16/1 outsider, finished eighth, 50 lengths behind the winner Predestine. The stewards interviewed Malone and Pipe's representative Bob Hodge and, having viewed tapes of the race, found Pipe in breach of rule 155 concerning the instructions he had given to Malone. Pipe was fined and Malone banned for seven days under rule 158.

There was a welcome local winner in the final race on the card, the Mares Handicap Hurdle, when Macnance, from the Byton yard of Richard Lee, gamely defied top weight under Andrew Thornton to deprive the Cecil Price trained Scratch the Dove by threequarters of a length.