The allure of the Cheltenham festival (of racing) for me is rather little about horses. I know very little about horses – almost all of them look much the same to me.
The attraction is mostly about the people – so much of the attraction of life is about the people isn’t it?
Going to the festival is a social event for me – the racing provides an excuse for getting together, and for good conversation and good times to be had with friends and acquaintances, and friends of friends. I have travelled to the races, over the years, with at least 40 different people. We have talked about which horse would win on the way to the races, and which horses actually did win on the way home. We have talked about Brexit, general elections, our mortgages, our children, other people’s divorces, books we have read (and written), our ageing parents, our now-passed-away parents, our bosses, our prospects and all those other things that people talk about.
Many of these people have clocked up over a decade of Cheltenham festivals and picnics in the car park where we have watched women dressed more for style in July than comfort in March, spotted celebrities walking past, seen inexpertly driven 4x4s stuck in light mud, gasped as a car in front of us made a car park attendant jump out of the way when going for a favoured parking place, and bought and sold spare tickets from touts.
On Tuesday evening, back near Oxford, a group of us spent a good 90mins talking about when a particular photo of many of us was taken (answer 1995, I think) even though some of the participants weren’t even born then! The conversation touched on the year when I bought the Crombie coat that I wore in the photograph from a charity shop in Weston-super-Mare with my winnings from Cool Ground’s win in the Welsh National, whether that really was snow on Cleeve Hill in the background and what year that would signify, where were our children and was there any sign of a bump that might signify their arrival etc etc.
The picnic is quiite traditional – traditional pies, traditional sandwiches, traditional cakes and a tradition of fine red wines. You could do all this without there being a lot of horses preparing to run round in circles but I’m not sure that would draw us so reliably together.
And so as we enter the racecourse proper from the car park one’s mind engages with two more groups of people; the crowd and the racing professionals.
There are around 60,000 – 70,000 people on each of the four days of the festival and we are a very mixed bunch. For a start, half of Ireland seems to be in the Cotswolds for these days. But when the first race starts (or quite often false-starts these days) we are mostly intent on watching the race and at the finishing end of things as the leading horses run up the Cheltenham hill to the finishing line then you see people in ecstacy and despair. Shouting at a horse, or its jockey, to run faster is a rather pointless thing to do but we’ve all done it. The crowd is a participant and provides masses of atmosphere (and crowded toilets).
But we are the punters and we depend on the trainers, jockeys, stable staff, owners etc to put on the show. We, the crowd, have our favourites and we reckon we know the strengths and weaknesses of the people involved, and who to trust when they say that their horse has got a good chance. By its very nature, horse racing is a competetive business and that adds the edge to the event – for every race there is only one winner, and many losers. And the racing at Cheltenham brings the best horses together for the best races for the biggest prize money – those that fail were trying to succeed. A win in one of the big races here marks a horse (and its jockey and trainer) as one of the greats in this form of sport. Today’s Gold Cup winner, Al Boum Photo (on which I did invest) won this race last year too and thus completed a very rare double. That may seem like a silly name for a horse, but he (gelded though he is) now can be mentioned in the same conversations as Desert Orchid, the sainted Arkle, Best Mate, Kauto Star and Dawn Run as winners of this race.
We leave the racecourse with our wallets and purses (or nowadays our internet accounts) depleted or replenished, our livers slightly challenged, our hands cold or toastie warm, our shoes a little muddier, and a little wiser or perhaps a little more foolish. But many of us will be back tomorrow, or once we get to Friday, next year.
I’ll write more about Cheltenham over the next few days, maybe about betting, and about horse welfare, and other things. But if you have been wondering what were the two bird species I added to my Cheltenham list this year they were Mistle Thrush (well done Les) and Merlin.
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The nearest I got to betting on a Gold Cup runner (just because I liked the name) was Little Owl in 1981 when I lived in Cheltenham. I didn’t bet and, of course, Little Owl won.
Enjoyed that post. No doubt at high profile Cheltenham the horses that fail are trying to succeed. But that reminded me of the times, as a teenager in the 1960s, I used to go to the races with my uncle, a keen betting man. He was always interested to see if a horse’s “connections” had bothered to turn up but this did not always indicate that the horse would be trying. I still remember his disgust as the horse that was carrying his investment in a race at Warwick trailed in, very obviously not trying. At one time he himself was a part owner of quite a good horse, so he knew how the game was played…
Where’s the rest of the posts about Cheltenham Mark? Start with how irresponsible it was to attend a mass gathering in MARCH perhaps?