melrose, faint praise, jennings is 110% correct, as always & greatest ever duel.

​The Racing Post’s Betting Editor – I often wonder the chores a betting editor must pursue to warrant the title – Keith Melrose, is the latest expert chosen to put his head above the parapet in the ‘best bets’ section of the paper. He plumps for Jagwar, though it is unclear which race he will turn up in at the Festival next week.
I really should be keeping a list of all these apparent ‘good things’ in order to see who proves successful and who to avoid in the future. I remain wedded, by the way, to The New Lion, despite what Mark Holder said about him in his question and answer column in today’s paper.

I am disappointed in Catherine Macrae, though in her defence it may be the editor who should take the flack. He might have commanded her to write 600-words on the five breakthrough females in Cheltenham Festival history. As a young gal, I was surprised Catherine remembered the exploits of the enigmatic, and would we not love to have her in the sport nowadays, Dorothy Paget, owner of Golden Miller and bane in the lives of most of the people who trained her horses. Caroline Beasley had to be included as she was the first female to ride a winner at the Festival. Jenny Pitman, too, was a shoo-in to be included, being the first woman to train a Gold Cup winner. If the piece was not centred on the Cheltenham Festival, the inclusion of Lizzie Kelly would have been well-merited, and though she was the first female to win a Grade 1, that was at Aintree, not Cheltenham, and her only Festival success was in a handicap, it was though a brilliant derring-do of a ride. And any written word on the subject of female riders has to include Rachael Blackmore, perhaps one of the top ten female sportspeople in the history of sporting endeavour.
But here comes the moan, Catherine. It was faint praise to mention Bryony Frost’s contribution to the female jockey and the Cheltenham Festival as ‘her lofty achievements’. She was, and for ever will be remembered as, the first female to win a Grade I Chase at the Festival. She also won a Foxhunters, the only female to win there as both an amateur and a professional. And ahead of Lizzie Kelly in the Festival Female Stakes is Gee Armytage who rode two winners in two-days at the Festival.

If Lossiemouth runs in the Mares Hurdle on Tuesday, as David Jennings so eloquently and bullishly writes in his column, Cheltenham will be cornered into changing the conditions to force the connections of high-class mares to run them in the Champion Hurdle. Jennings is one of those writers whose words and sentiment reach out from the page and sit the reader down next to him. He is 100% correct in his analysis of this debate and the immensely likeable combination of Willie Mullins and Rich Richi will deserve the vilification that should come their way. If the fall at Leopardstown has affected her confidence in any way, it is as likely to cause her downfall in a big field Mares Hurdle and a small-sized Champion Hurdle. If that Leopardstown fall has affected her, she should not be on the boat crossing the Irish Sea.

Chris Cook takes Racing Post readers back to the 1964 running of the Cheltenham Gold Cup and the day Arkle, in beating Mill House ‘the best since Golden Miller’, became the legend that has and forever more will rule over our sport as the greatest racehorse of all-time. Of his three Gold Cups, such was his domination, this was the only one in which he needed to exert himself. In one of those quirks of history, as when Rachael Blackmore won her only pony race by beating Paul Townend in a bob of heads finish, Pat Taaffe had been the first to put a leg over Mill House, and also hunted him before he was put into training. In his wonderful autobiography ‘My Life, and Arkle’s’, he rated Mill House as the second-best horse he ever rode, ahead of Flyingbolt.
To have those days again; not that there will ever be another Arkle.