Millions to be spent on booze, bets, and bites at Cheltenham
For the bones of four days every March, the authorities here manage to squeeze six or seven races into a tiny, four-hour window and punters enter the spirit by throwing away millions on bets, booze, and bites. It’s immeasurable fun.
It’s also one of the few venues in the worlds of sport or entertainment where the smell of cigarette smoke can still approach something like the levels of an era long gone, but it’s the pace of life that can really leave you in a haze.
You’ve probably come across all those crazy stats that try to put some sort of perspective on the madness: the 200,000 pints of Guinness consumed, the 10,000 punters who come over from Ireland, or the £3.85m (€4.6m) in prize money.
They help put some context on the whole, mad thing but there is simply no explaining the release of tension and excitement that greets the start of the first race every year, the Supreme Novices Hurdle.
It helps too when the winner of the opener is an Irish entrant. Champagne Fever delivered the goods for the raiders this time last year, the first of 14 successes that would leave the Irish-trained gee-gees with more winners than their English counterparts for the very first time.
Vautour followed suit yesterday, another feather in the cap for the Willie Mullins/Ruby Walsh trainer-jockey team, and by the end of the day’s play — though not the night’s — two more wins had been claimed by the visitors.
Among them were the usual faces: Dermot Desmond, JP McManus, whose horse Jezki claimed the big Champion Hurdle, and Michael O’Leary who had to find a new “lucky spot” in the parade ring when one of the big screens was moved. It didn’t work. Not yesterday. He left without a winner.
So too did thousands of punters but it’s a fact of life that, though the ground is covered with beaten dockets by the evening’s end, it’s rare that you meet someone who will admit to leaving with less money than when they arrived.
Among the throng yesterday was Ireland rugby international Seán O’Brien whose dislocated shoulder has sidelined him from duties this last two months and, on the flip side, allowed him to attend the festival for the first time.
“I’m here for two days,” he said before explaining the allure of the festival. “It is a bit of everything I suppose, the hype around it. It is the biggest festival going and something I’ve never been at before. I’m looking forward to this one.”
O’Brien could, under other circumstances, have had the opportunity to watch The Tullow Tank, the horse named in his honour and which he owned one time along with friend Paul Duffin, partake in the festival. But the horse was withdrawn from consideration by current owner, Dublin businessman Barry Connell, due to the ongoing case surrounding the alleged possession of anabolic steroids by trainer Philip Fenton.
“I was disappointed he isn’t running but sure, you know, hopefully he’ll be here next year,” said the Leinster player.
Perspective is, unfortunately, always handy when it comes to the sport of kings.
Jockey Jason Maguire was ruled out of the festival after suffering a fractured sternum and bleeding on his liver after a fall at Stratford over the weekend and Ruby Walsh was mindful of that and more as he won some and lost others yesterday.
“You think about pressure and then you think about Jason Maguire this morning,” he said. “Talking with AP [McCoy] before racing and he’s showing me pictures of Archie [his seven-month old son, who had heart surgery last Friday].
“My kids are healthy at home and you’re thinking Cheltenham is great but there are bigger things in life too.”
