cheltenham: good luck to you all.

​At the start of the season proper in October, the Cheltenham Festival seems as far away as the Moon is from Earth. Yet come March 10th 2024, it is as if Cheltenham 2023 was only last month. The joy should be about the travel, the journey from then to now, yet the Festival so overwhelms the rest of the season that the joy becomes the arrival and the brief interlude when we step away from the grim reality of the everyday and immerse ourselves in the cut and thrust of glorious sporting endeavour. Cheltenham; it knocks Royal Ascot and the Epsom Derby into a cocked hat, whatever a cocked hat might be. 
When the debate, the really heated debate, broke out when Cheltenham floated the idea of a fifth-day, imitating the success of the fifth-day of Royal Ascot, I was 100% in favour of the suggestion. I thought with imagination a fifth-day could be made to work, especially as a fifth-day would have put extra money into a local economy ravaged by the pointless escapade that were covid restrictions. My idea was that the fifth-day could become a day to raise funds for equine charities, with the Cross-Country Chase as the feature, supported by all those races lost in order to incorporate the mares’ races that now weaken the overall quality of the Festival. I would also have used consolation races for two of the major handicaps to make-up the card.
I no longer support the fifth-day. In fact, I am now an advocate of returning the Festival to 3-days as the pool of quality horses no longer exist to ensure the major races are as competitive as tradition dictates they should be. The best horses should be in the best races, with connections not given softer alternatives.
I have now put forward the idea of abandoning ‘Trials Day’ in February, a meeting that when compared to the Dublin Racing Festival is a dud, and have a bone fide 2-day Cheltenham Festival in its place. Mad, perhaps. Yet, remember, the Cheltenham Festival and the Gold Cup were not universally accepted as the next big thing when it first arrived on the National Hunt scene. In fact, the National Hunt Festival is named after the amateur riders 4-mile race that was for horses that had never won a chase. How times change!
What I dislike about the argument put forward by the traditional 3-day advocates is abandoning races that have proved successful and have given us memorable moments. The Ryanair, for instance, is a great and necessary race and has done nothing to deserve being jettisoned just because ‘something has to give’ if we return to 3-days. And I absolutely object to it being reduced to the conditions of the race it grew from, the Cathcart.
The Ryanair is a great race and should not be sacrificed. Now, whether Michael O’Leary would want to sponsor ‘his’ race if it were run as the feature race of a 2-day Winter Festival, I cannot guess. He might. He also might sponsor a second race at the 3-day March Festival. O’Leary is mercurial; he might go left, he might go right. But a Ryanair in February would be, to my mind, a perfect stepping-stone between the King George and the Gold Cup. In fact, if the sport needed a chasing Triple Crown, the King George, Ryanair and Gold Cup would be the perfect three-races.
I would remove the Mares Hurdle from March and stage it in February and rename it the Champion Mares Hurdle and run it over 2-miles, allowing the best mares to take on the geldings in March, or at least removing one of the excuses for not running mares against the geldings. I would also jettison the Mares novice hurdle, the Mares Chase and what is, at least for this season, the Gallaghers, and parachute them into this proposed new Festival. The novice handicap chase could be reborn, too, and I will forever champion the introduction of a 4-mile champion chase, though I would prefer it to replace the amateur riders National Hunt Chase.
My suggestion would return the Cheltenham Festival to what it used to be, the most competitive meeting of the whole season, without losing any races that are both of great benefit to the sport and provide year-in, year-out, fabulous memories.
The rest of this proposed 2-day Festival would comprise trials for the novice hurdles and chases and any races that would not directly clash with the Dublin Racing Festival and that would mean no trial for the Champion Hurdle, for example or Gold Cup, allowing trials at other racecourses to become more meaningful than they are at present.
And yes, I fully realise nature might intervene and cause abandonments and the headache of what to do with important races that could not be run. But I would argue that is no different to any race-meeting, even the Festival in March and Aintree in April.
My proposal allows the sport 5-days of truly premiership racing without any new races needed. It is radical and I know the B.H.A. runs scared of radical thought. The B.H.A. likes to meddle around the edges of a problem; talk with stakeholders and delay, delay and delay some more. What is required at this present moment in the sport’s history is ‘decisions for now’; alterations that take effect now, not five-years down the line. I do not believe we have the luxury of five-years-worth of dithering.