JUST THE BEST WEEK OF THE YEAR.

​ 
Happy Cheltenham Festival week to anyone with the time to spare to read my outpouring of love and affection for this wonderful sport of ours.
The Cheltenham Festival; medicine for the soul.
I will begin with the hoary old chestnut of should the Festival be shortened to three days, extended to five or left as it is. On the basis of ‘if a little of what you like does you good’ then more must be better, I continue to propose a fifth day. Not a fifth Festival day but a fifth day on the lines of the ‘Heath day’ that used to follow on from Royal Ascot, the main race being, if I remember correctly, the Churchill Stakes.
My support for a non-festival day on the Saturday is based on the safety net principle. Let us say we lose a day of this year’s Festival, a scenario we have suffered in recent memory when high winds caused the abandonment of the second day. This entailed, as brilliantly executed as it was, squeezing the affected races into the remaining two days, which if a similar scenario were to occur this year would mean holding three days racing over two days on very soft ground. If Wednesday were to be lost to the weather this year, and we had my proposed fifth day, the Wednesday card could be staged on the Saturday or the remaining three days moved back a day, with the Gold Cup run on the Saturday, with the Heath day’s card abandoned or transferred to another day or another racecourse.
This proposed fifth day would also allow Cheltenham to try out new races that could be incorporated into the Festival in the following years. The proposed Mares Chase or Bumper for example or the 2-mile 4-furlong championship hurdle. Or my greatest wish of a 4-mile Championship Chase. And any race demoted from the Festival would not then be lost but would become a feature of the fifth day.
The fifth day would also allow Cheltenham to stage the races currently run at Kempton for horses eliminated from the big handicaps. I personally would like the United Hunts Hunter Chase to return to Festival week, with the fifth day the best option for this old classic 4-mile steeplechase.
Whether the old or new course would be used for this ‘hoped-for’ fifth day is not for me to decide but having the two courses makes the fifth day a more viable option. Of course a fifth day would require sponsors, though I would imagine the big bookmaking and spread betting firms would be falling over themselves to be involved as a fifth Cheltenham day on a Saturday is sure to increase betting turnover. And the Heath day would have a more relaxed atmosphere, allowing racegoers, racing channels and I.T.V. (who I hope will be covering racing for well beyond their present contract) to reflect on the previous four days, with the big races perhaps replayed through the afternoon on the big screen.
Cheltenham is the focus of the whole National Hunt season. Because it is an open air event held in March it can be held hostage by rain, frost, snow or high winds. The fifth day would give Cheltenham a bit of wriggle room, wriggle room that it currently does not have at its disposal.
Let us hope this week for ground that is not gluey and that every horse and every jockey makes it home at the end of each day. I doubt if this year’s Festival will be a classic; I suspect it will be remembered as much for the ground conditions as the races themselves. And I hope the Irish allow us to win a few more races than they did last year. And I hope Douvan reminds us how brilliant he is and that Altior is there to test him to the limit. And I hope Cue Card covers himself in glory and does not succumb to the third last fence again or for time immemorial the fence will be called the ‘Cue Card’ fence. I hope Bryony Frost defeats my ‘certainty’ for the meeting, Presenting Percy and that Ruby gets through the week unscathed and that the whole four days goes off without incident or controversy. But this is Cheltenham, and it is very rarely anything less than we hope for.