The odds are short ... and against me

FOR a half-wit racegoer like me, it was an exhilarating moment in sport. Granted permission to stand on the track for the first race at Cheltenham, I was close enough to the underbelly of a horse to appreciate why the majority are gelded as they thunder at 40 miles an hour over spiky bundles of birch.

My marvelling at the spectacle ground to an abrupt halt, however, when my horse, the favourite Justified faded under the challenge of Arcalis. To rub salt in the weeping wound, my companion, a seasoned sports hack, gleefully announced he had backed the winner at 33/1. Bah humbug. Whoever said everyone loves a winner?

My losing streak continued until the third race when Brave Inca obliged by coming in third. Last of the big spenders, my €2.50 each way bet meant I finished up with the princely sum of, you guessed it, €2.50. If I had only heeded the advice of the avuncular Charlie McCreevy, when he earlier warned Cheltenham was the hardest course to make money on. Happy as a pig in the proverbial, he was in attendance with wife Noleen, for his "winter break."