Robin Oakley

Cheltenham Festival was a triumph

The emotion was heightened by the sense that it might be a long time before we gathered again

The socialite MP Chips Channon once noted in his diaries his feelings about an after-lunch snooze in parliament’s Library: ‘It was,’ he said, ‘a true House of Commons sleep. There is no sleep to compare with it — rich, deep and guilty.’

With racing by then almost the only spectator sport available, the 60,000 a day who turned up for this year’s Cheltenham Festival had similar instincts. Thanks to coronavirus, millions were facing ill health, bankruptcy or worse while we gloried in the comparatively trivial distractions of who arrived first past the post in 28 races. Yet the vividness of the spectacle and the intensity of emotion were as gripping as ever, if not more so as we sensed that it might be a long time before we gathered in numbers to see its like again.

The glorious uncertainties began with the very first race, when in the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle Nicky Henderson’s Shishkin, ridden by the skilful Nico de Boinville, bungled one obstacle badly, got shuffled back in the pack and was nearly brought down, yet still went through the gears up the hill to win his race. Said his pilot hailing a future star: ‘That’s what champions do. They get themselves out of a hole and they get the jockey looking a little bit better than they probably should.’

The contest for champion trainer lasted until the final race when a countdown on placed horses gave the edge to Willie Mullins over Gordon Elliott. Their seven victories apiece meant that two men from Ireland had trained half the Festival winners between them and Willie’s stable jockey Paul Townend, after a tricky start, held his nerve to cement his position as successor to Ruby Walsh. It is to some extent a numbers game: Willie had sent 50 horses to the Festival and as one Lambourn handler remarked to me: ‘Most of us would be delighted to have 50 horses in the yard full stop, let alone 50 good enough to bring to Cheltenham.’

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