the 5-day cheltenham debate is not yes/no, you know.

​The five-day Cheltenham Festival is not a fait accompli, apparently. Good. That implies there will be a debate on the subject, with everyone, hopefully, who has an opinion given the opportunity to put in their two-penny worth. This subject is not inconsequential; it matters greatly to the sport. Five-days could be a disaster, even if short-term it brings an increase in revenue for The Jockey Club, Cheltenham racecourse and for the economy of the town of Cheltenham and its environs. Believe me, as succulent as the fruit of five-days may seem from afar, up close and personal it might upset the stomachs of the loyal and faithful.
The saying ‘if a little of what you fancy does you good, then more should be better’ may be true of some aspects of life but shouldn’t become the logo for those in favour of five-days. Remember, a whole bunch of worthy people were dead against the fourth-day, yet thus far it is remaining sustainable. Four-days has just about worked, so the nay-sayings were proved wrong. An extension to five-days might prove those same people right.
I remain confident, though, that a fifth-day on the Saturday is perfectly viable, as long as it is not marketed as a Festival day. It will be considered part of the Festival, of course, but it shouldn’t be advertised as such. Most Cheltenham meetings are well-attended. They might not be sold-out as the Festival is year-in, year-out, but the stands are deeply thronged and the racecourse makes a healthy profit. I see the Saturday fifth-day as being akin to the November meeting; not heaving with humanity but happily swarming, jam-packed but with elbow room and minimal waiting time for the loos. I refer this day as an ‘Heath Day’ as once followed the four-day Royal Ascot meeting.
This non-festival day could easily accommodate the consolation races for the big handicaps presently run at Kempton and any new races the racecourse executive would like to try out. I would also move the cross-country race to be the centrepiece of the Saturday and bumping up the prize-money in hope of persuading the top European-trained cross-country horses to compete. I would replace it with a Veterans Chase for eleven-year-old and upwards.
Actually, though, and this only came to me this morning and as with many of my ideas it is yet to be thoroughly thought through, there is an alternative which might win over the diehards who have no truck with the notion of a five-day Festival, even though there are financial benefits that the sport cannot turn aside.
Squeeze all the Grade 1’s, except the mares only races, and major handicaps into three-days, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, run what is left on the Friday, the Kim Muir, National Hunt Chase, Martin Pipe, perhaps, making it a major betting day, with the fifth-day as I described earlier. A three-day festival proper as the purists long-for and five-days of magnificent racing to swell the coffers. The National Hunt Festival evolving to accommodate all its enthusiasts. 
And while I am on the subject of three, four or five-days and whether the latter will diminish further the field sizes and quality of runners. It is ill-conceived to believe twenty-runners in championship races make for a more exhilarating race. What is demanded of the Champion Hurdle, Queen Mother Champion 2-mile Chase, Stayers Hurdle and Gold Cup is that all the right horses turn-out. To my mind the championship races only need ten to a dozen runners, as long as the best all run, which this season will be the case. If the handicaps were only attracting a dozen runners, then we would have a problem and from my viewpoint the only disappointing race at the Festival this year is the National Hunt Chase, a race severely meddled with for no better reason than to assuage critics and protesters whose fuel is ignorance and who salivate with selfish joy when a horse dies. If there is a similarly small field next season it might be time to draw stumps on it as a novice chase for amateurs and replace it with the one-race missing from the whole National Hunt calendar, a 4-mile championship chase.
The Cheltenham executive have an important decision to make and we must hope they get it right. The safest step in the short-term is my suggestion of a Heath Day on the Saturday, with the Midlands National run a week earlier to produce a great betting day alongside the Imperial Cup at Sandown.