Having been catapulted into racing superstardom at the only Cheltenham Festival to be staged behind closed doors in the event’s 164‑year history, Rachael Blackmore knows how it feels to walk into the winners’ enclosure to the sound of spooky silence punctuated only by the hoofbeat of an exhausted horse.
However, despite all the doom‑mongering over potentially low attendances at this year’s Festival, the popular Irish jockey returned to a more suitably raucous heroine’s welcome after booting Slade Steel home in front of his 10 rivals in this year’s opener, the Supreme Novice Hurdle. Despite understandable concerns, it seems rumours of Cheltenham’s demise have, for now at least, been greatly exaggerated. While the crowd of more than 60,000 on Tuesday was slightly down on last year they were no less enthusiastic and there were no discernible gaps in the thronged grandstand, betting ring or Guinness Village, where the stout was both overpriced and in full flow.
A little over an hour previously, any number of tickets for the Tattersalls or Best Mate enclosures were still available on the course’s official website for the afternoon’s sport, although a noon deluge would have done little to encourage any last-minute walk-ups. Earlier in the morning, the summit of the adjacent Cleeve Hill had been so obviously covered in thick grey fog that it prompted bickering in the press room over whether or not it would look unprofessional if every single scribe or broadcaster present described the famous backdrop as being “shrouded in silver mist”.
Loitering near the entrance, tasked with accosting celebrity arrivals for interviews with the radio station TalkSport, the comedian Charlie Baker was dining on extremely thin gruel ahead of the first. “I’ve seen Mike Tindall but only because he’s always here and I know where to find him if I’m stuck,” he said of the former England rugby international who is a regular attendee with his wife, Lady Zara Phillips. “Otherwise, there’s been nobody; not even anyone from Love Island.”
The cost-of-living crisis has understandably been cited as a reason for lower civilian footfall than usual at Prestbury Park, with the £85 or £67 price of admission to the course just the kick-off for punters who are also forced to dig deep for preposterously overpriced accommodation and on-course refreshments before they even think about trying to recoup some of their outlay from the betting ring. In a recent newspaper column, the ITV frontman Ed Chamberlin called out local hoteliers for price‑gouging, declared the Festival to be “at a crossroads” and called on its organisers to “move with the times” in a bid to save their cash-cow from devouring itself.
Chamberlin is not the only concerned observer to have noticed that small fields, a lack of competitiveness and the domination of Irish trainers, foremost among them Willie Mullins, which have almost certainly contributed to dwindling attendances and his Irish colleague Kevin Blake, a housewives’ favourite among tipsters, has been similarly vocal in his criticism of the Festival, even going so far as to suggest eminently workable solutions.
It is to be hoped that the sound of such ardent turf enthusiasts voicing their disquiet may jolt the Jockey Club into some kind of decisive action, even if its members are not exactly renowned for their willingness to quickly embrace anything resembling sensible change. While we wait, the expected domination of Mullins continued, even if he was forced to settle for saddling “just” three winners from a seven-race card – among them the odds-on Champion Hurdle favourite State Man and the similarly short‑priced mare Lossiemouth in the Mares’ Hurdle.
While a day at the Festival is invariably one well spent, the threat of equine fatalities overshadowing proceedings is never far away. One of two horses along with Ose Partir to lose their lives on the opening day, the Fergal O’Brien-trained Highland Hunter died as the result of a fall in the Ultima Handicap Chase, the third race of the afternoon.
A one-time resident in the yard of the leading British trainer Paul Nicholls until his switch to another stable, the 11-year-old grey was the favourite horse of Keagan Kirkby, a popular employee of Nicholls who lost his life while riding in a point‑to‑point race in Kent last month. Last Tuesday in the Somerset village of Ditcheat, Highland Hunter was front and centre as he led the 25‑year‑old’s funeral cortege.
