Normal service resumes for bookies

AND so things return to normality. For the first two days of the festival the bookies here took a dreadful hammering — losses were being calculated upwards by the million as each race passed – and by the end of trading on Wednesday conservative estimates of the bookies’ losses across the industry were being estimated at about £25m.

And what happened yesterday? Well, yesterday they took it all back.

The defeats of Voy Por Ustedes in the Ryanair Chase and Kasbah Bliss in the Ladbroke World Hurdle, hit the punters hard and got the bookies right back in the picture.