Cheltenham Festival review: Hotpots and howlers from the most remarkable Festival in recent years

CHELTENHAM is simply the friendliest place on the planet for four days in March.

Wherever you end up watching each race, you quickly get pulled into conversation.

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Some are drunk and some are clueless, but all are completely sucked into the Festival bubble for the time they spend at Prestbury Park.

Tips fly about, Guinness is spilt and binoculars are pointed at the action by tweed-clad devotees. It makes for some atmosphere.

I was lucky enough to spend all four days working the Festival and tried my best to mix it with all sorts of different crowds across the course.

While most of the week remains a blur, I’ve picked through the action to come up with the heroes and villains, and highs and lows of what was one of the most remarkable Festivals in recent years.

One area that needs looking at next season is the National Hunt Chase, run as the last on the Tuesday.

I took this race in down on the track where the stable staff and some trainers watch. It descended into chaos on the last circuit and was one of, if not the worst thing I have seen on a racecourse.

There were three screens up as Le Breuil battled to victory under Jamie Codd. Somehow there was only one casualty and thankfully the race wasn’t on ITV, otherwise it would have got a hell of a lot more attention.

The screens shot up in the worst possible places too. One right in front of the Best Mate enclosure, with two screens up after the second last and last fences.

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Only four horses from 18 made it past the finish line and it was simply brutal to watch. Vets, doctors and stable staff did all they could to ensure the situation remained calm but you could see the sheer panic on everyones faces. It was a very emotional place.

What to do? Well something needs to change, and it’s not about pandering to those who simply want the sport banned.

The race is one of the oldest in the calendar, but it needs to be brought into the modern day, with better jockeys or possibly horses only able to compete.

If it brings the numbers in the race down then that may have to be the giveaway if it helps prevent a repeat of this years horror show.

If you can watch the video below and think that is good for the sport, then you need to bring your head from out of the clouds.

 

 

From the lows of Tuesday evening to the highs of Thursday afternoon. There was not a dry eye in the house for the right reasons as first Frodon and Bryony Frost and then Paisley Park and Aidan Coleman came up trumps.

I have never witnessed such a passionate and emotional crowd at any sporting occasion between the finish of the Ryanair and the celebrations of Andrew Gemmell after the Sun Racing Stayers’ Hurdle.

Only a sport such as racing, with the grassroot passion and love for the game, can produce such a contrastingly beautiful hour of television and live sport.

Frost is as good an ambassador as any sport can hope for, while Gemmell, blind since birth, shows it is a sport anyone can enjoy.

The mainstream coverage this hour of sport achieved outshone everything else at the Festival, even Willie Mullins’s first Gold Cup win.

This sport has plenty to shout about, but tends to ignore the obvious feel good stories for duff marketing and a ‘come and have a beer’ attitude.

Show any hater that hour of ITV’s coverage and you’ll soon be on to a winner.

Punting wise I had a real mixed bag, with Tuesday and Friday one for the bookies and the middle days generally won by the punters.

But on course bookmakers do nothing to help themselves and the pattern of more and more people betting through their phones is only going to increase and I don’t blame punters for that.

Take the Best Mate Enclosure. The bookies positioned outside with all the concessions and bars were regularly offering prices TWO whole points worse than what was on offer less than fifty metres away next to the track.

They’re simply taking advantage of those that bet on a lesser scale and not inclined to hunt for the best prices. Why should anyone bet with these in the long-term?

Then there was the Albert Bartlett. I fancied Stoney Mountain to outrun his large odds. Don’t ask why, but he was soon tailed off.

Anyway, I went hunting around the various on course bookies in the Club Enclosure. Prices ranged from 20-1 to 28-1.

I quickly popped on my phone – I say quickly, the wifi and signal was appalling – and could find 33-1 and even 40-1 in a place.

But it doesn’t end there. On course bookmakers, legally, were offering only three places. Whilst online I found one bookie offering FIVE.

Bookies are only causing themselves problems.

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I also have a bone to pick with the large number of punters amongst the sold out 75,000 crowd who cheered when Sir Erec went wrong in the Truimph on Friday.

It wasn’t a pretty sight, but it was good to see a vocal number of angry spectators quickly turn on those that had selfishly cheered the favourite going wrong.

Social media was also awash with punters calling out those connected with Sir Erec and the like.

One well-known bookmaker from Star Sports even ‘Boomed’ the result as he got one up on punters. He hastily deleted the tweet, but these things are never truly deleted and he should have checked the situation before jumping the gun anyway.

Back to the heroes, and it’s impossible not to mention Altior’s triumph in the Champion Chase on Tuesday afternoon.

Nicky Henderson’s star is verging on Sprinter Sacre-Denmanesque status now and deservedly so.

Not much went right for him in Tuesday’s feature, but he and Nico de Boinville found a last burst after the last and fought off a brave Sceau Royal and Politologue.

He returned to a heroes welcome and I made sure to catch the scenes in with the dictaphone-free crowd and not with the gravy train in the Winners’ Enclosure.

There were three cheers, an emotional Nicky Henderson but best of all was the lap of honour where his groom took centre stage with the horse and it clearly meant so much to him.

A step up in trip looks on the cards next season, with the King George a more than realistic aim.

In the near furture, one more win will see him break Big Buck’s record of consecutive wins.

This horse should be savoured within the sport and is another rare leg that reaches out into the wider public. Enjoy this beast while you can.

Another big race hero was Paul Townend, who steered Al Boum Photo to a memorable win in the Gold Cup.

He kept his cool as the likes of Native River and Might Bite shot off at a frenetic Championship pace and bided his time to produce him in the home straight with just the hill to navigate.

In doing so he won his first Gold Cup, as well as unbelievably Willie Mullins’s first taste of success in the race too.

Townend has been with Mullins for over ten years, and now 28 has played second or even third fiddle to Ruby Walsh for much of that decade.

But as he repaid the owners that stuck with him despite his horror show on the same horse back at Punchestown last season, Mullins was also repaid for sticking with Townend.

It was a fitting end to an up and down week for Mullins.