oh my god! the flat starts this week.

​I will not dwell on the awful realisation that the new flat season begins at the weekend and the Racing Post will be dominated by enthusiasts of the levellers for the next 9-months. Personally, I do not get into flat racing until Royal Ascot when I can write about all that is wrong about the silly hat wearing festival and flat racing in general.
But for now, I remain thought-filled about the Cheltenham Festival, even if its annual dose of magic moments was rather lacking this year.
The ground was somewhere between soft and heavy all-week, yet the horses were not finishing legless and in need of the oxygen bottle, with some of the winners looking as fresh as the autumn dew in the winners’ enclosure. Slow ground, though, equals less fallers and less horses reaching the winning post.
For all that Willie Mullins has Galopin Des Champs, State Man, Fact To File, Lossiemouth and Ballyburn, to name but a few, in his stable, I think the horse with the greatest amount of ability could well be Gaelic Warrior, a horse that manages to combine the eccentricities of the wonderful Goshen with a pleasing-on-the-eye style of Irish dancing.
Rachael Blackmore may not be number 1 in the jockey ranks, though to the public she is head and shoulders the most popular, she is, though, perhaps, tactically the best, with some of her best rides last week coming on horses that beat everything but the Mullins superheroes.
In Salver, Gary Moore has a star in the making, with the Stayers Hurdle a possibility for next season. He ran on like a trooper late for parade in the Triumph and if fate is kind to him could easily be the horse that takes Gary Moore back into the winners’ enclosure at next year’s Festival.
Of course, crowd numbers were down. It was the most obvious odds-on favourite of the week, with television viewers going in the opposite direction the second-favourite. Costs for everything are high, with no racegoer but the solidly wealthy able to shrug off the cost of going to Cheltenham as if it were nothing more displeasing than a smidgeon of mud on the boot of the Roller.
Let children under 16 in for free and give concessions to both students and pensioners. Also, and here is an idea I offer for free, give reduced admission to anyone who has attended, outside of annual members, 3 or more meetings at Cheltenham during the season.
Customer satisfaction starts in the car-park, ask any business advisor. When wet, have plenty of tactors available to help car drivers onto tarmac. Sometimes it is the little things that mean the most.
I like Gordon Elliott, I just wish he would stop describing any horse he trains as ‘a horse of a lifetime, really’, as he is the man who trained Tiger Roll, the horse who is and will remain Gordon’s true ‘horse of a lifetime’.
On the subject of phrases or utterances which I wish people would stop saying. ‘He (or she) rides the horse every day’, Ed Chamberlain’s favourite line when describing a horse being led out on to the course or into the winners’ enclosure. It may be true, in part, though ‘most of the time’ would, I suggest, be more accurate. Pedantry, I agree, but journalists should always aim for accuracy in their reporting. Old concept, I agree, but then I am old and nostalgia lives next door to pedantic thought.
It was pleasing that the Foxhunters’ was won this year by a horse from the point-to-point field. If my proposal for a 3-day Spring Festival and a 2-day Winter Festival are to be ignored, which will be the case, I would like Cheltenham to change the conditions of the Foxhunters to exclude horses trained by public trainers so as to allow an annual dose of romance back to the Festival. And the National Hunt chase should be upgraded to a 4-mile Champion Chase and open to professional riders.