TWO-TIME Olympic cycling champion Victoria Pendleton is poised to continue her racing schooling at next month's point to point meeting at Barbury racecourse.

Pendleton, 35, is expected to take part in the Point to Point Owners & Riders Association meeting at Barbury on Sunday, December 6 as she continues towards her ambition of riding at the Cheltenham Festival next year.

Velodrome queen Pendleton, who retired after the London 2012 Olympic Games, swapped saddles earlier this year, completing her first public ride in a charity race at Newbury in July.

Under the guidance of Oxfordshire-based mentors Lawney and Alan Hill, as well as top jumps trainer Paul Nicholls and eventing guru Yogi Breisner, she narrowly missed out on her first victory at Ripon in August, riding the Hills' Royal Etiquette and was then unseated by Satanic Beat at Newbury last month.

The nine-time world champion on two wheels, who had never ridden a horse before her first riding lesson in February, is targeting the Foxhunter Chase - known as the amateurs' Golf Cup - at the Cheltenham Festival next March and is in training to ride two Betfair-owned horses in point-to-points during the winter as part of the next stage of her development.

According to Sarah was brought privately from trainer Philip Hobbs and is likely to feature in point to point Novice races, while Sedgemoor Express will take part in Ladies Races.

A PPORA spokesman said: "Racecourse experience will prove vital and the trainer reckons she will need to ride in at least 15 to 20 races prior to Cheltenham.

"She has a vastly experienced team behind her, but many of her fellow competitors have been riding all of their lives so she faces a difficult task achieving her goal.

"The fixture at Barbury Racecourse will be one of the first opportunities the public have of seeing how far Pendleton has progressed towards to what some believe is an impossible task.''