Better than Christmas
This year, for the first year, we based ourselves in
Cheltenham. Naturally, this is the aspiration of any regular festival stalwart.
However it is harder to pull off than you might imagine. Securing a berth in
the hallowed heart of this Regency gem is either an exorbitantly expensive or
frustratingly booked-up undertaking. Had Mary & Joseph pitched up here for the
virgin birth, the only way they would have found a stable would have been to part-own the favourite for the Supreme. In which
case any Irish landlady would have willingly thrown open her doors.
There is another way. What you need is some very good mates
who are happy to convert their splendid abode into a 5-star b&b for the
duration. Best result of the week.
Chris and Laura, impeccable hosts, looked after us wonderfully. And it
was not without some risk on their part. Yes, they knew me. And I could vouch
for Si. But they had never met Nev before… Still, the behaviour benchmark was
fractionally lower than we had anticipated. “Have they been sick on the carpet
yet?” had asked Laura’s Mum.
Nev only joined us at Chris and Laura’s on Wednesday
morning. He had booked into a tidy spot in Bourton-on the-Water before the
Cheltenham opportunity became available. He made his mark though. Within half
an hour, he was hammering away at our hosts’ generously lent laptop, trying to
find and then print his Wednesday ticket. Because he’d lost it. Honestly, what
sort of total prat would do such an idiotic thing?
Well, me for one. A few years ago I spilled out of the first
day, exhausted and winner-free, saying to Bacchy that I’d avoid any confusing
ticketing issues by ripping up that day’s expired voucher and chucking it away.
I realised the next morning that I had, naturally, trashed the 2nd day
ticket by mistake. That was an expensive tout-job to get in.
And Bryn for another. After leaving our Tewksbury base for
the track at our very first three-day adventure, he realised he’d left all our
tickets back at the ranch.
Nev was unable to recover the e-mail with the all important
pdf attachment. Neither could he wring any support from the Jockey Club. After
getting a runaround from their sales team that would make the Cross Country
course look like a 5 furlong sprint, he gave up. Laura had already done so,
having dashed out of the front door some minutes earlier with a yoga mat tucked
under her arm. Peace for body and mind. Si and I thought about joining her.
Approaching the collection booth up at the track was a lot
more fruitful. Nev decided on a tête à tête with the ticket lady. Literally. He
stuck his head so far through the half-window that he was on tip-toes with his
backside in the air. “Go and do something funny with Nev”, said Si, priming his
phone camera. I demurred. There are enough of those kind of photos of me in
circulation already…
This in-yer-face approach worked. Nev got his ticket
re-emailed, which he then downloaded to his phone so it could be scanned by the
man with the magic machine at the turnstiles.
Faugheen was the highlight of Ruby Tuesday. We were stood by
the rail in glorious sunshine watching the tactics unfold on the big screen. It
was hard to judge the pace but when The New One and then Jezki came almost
alongside to lay down a proper challenge, the excitement was palpable. And
then, easy as you like, at top of the home straight, Ruby let out a little bit
of Faugheen’s tight reign and whispered “go”. Did he go! The roar from the stands
opposite, in all my 16 festivals, was the loudest, most spine-tingling sensation
I’ve ever experienced. I’ll probably say the same next year.
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| l-r: Arctic Fire, Jezki, Kitten Rock, Vaniteux, Faugheen |
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| Faugheen and Ruby Walsh take the plaudits |
By the fourth leg, Nev had found himself in a deep (but fairly
one-sided) conversation with a broad scouser, made more unintelligible still by
his level of intoxication. Nev was trying to explain that his three timer
rested on Annie Power winning the mares race. Scouser dribbled something back
that involved a fair amount of “eerrrraaaarrrffkkkknnncchhhhhhhhhh” running
into “fffkkkkkcccccchhhhhhhuuuaaarrcchhhh”. I’ve never seen Nev silenced. He
couldn’t understand a word. His jaw was hanging loose. Si always has a canny
ear for an accent and translated. Between them they informed Scouser that it
was “a mares race…lady horses”. Scouser looked askance and then responded
(after translation) “I don’t want a fucking education and I want a fucking
winner!”
When Annie Power overreached at the last flight and
triggered a ticker-tape storm of spent fourfold slips, there were immediate
cries of bookie collusion and thrown-race allegations around us. Punters always
want someone to blame. The fantasy could not have been better scripted if Fleet
Street hacks had authored it themselves. News stories later in the day about
bookie share prices falling sharply and then rising again just added to the drama.
Great stuff.
Sharp quiffed young fellah-me-lad in my office had a bit of
good natured grief for me when I returned to the office last week. I’d put him on to that
four-timer in a rash moment a few weeks before the Festival. He’d shown his
slip to a few mates and they had followed him in. To be honest, I think he had rather
enjoyed the ride and the sense of being part of something big.
Si is the handicap King. No question. Coming in to the
festival he’d punted Ebony Express (33-1) in the Imperial Cup and Violet Dancer
(20-1) in the Betfair Hurdle. Across the four days he found The Druid’s Nephew in
the 3 mile chase on Tuesday, Kilultagh Vic in the Martin Pipe on Friday and a
good few placed horses besides. He also had Quantitativeasing bustled out of the way by
Toutancarmont in the Cross Country when being wound up by Nina Carberry for a
decisive thrust.
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| New stand taking shape |
“Three years ago Davoski collected a stack when Call The Police finished a remote third in Bobs Worth's RSA Chase. So naturally he backed Call The Cops today. Finding easy winners like that - it's what life's all about.”
Cheeky bastard. So much for blood, tears, toil and sweat.
It wasn’t just the handicaps that fell prey to Si’s killer touch. He was feasting everywhere: Windsor Park in the Neptune; Vautour in the JLT; Martello Tower in the Albert Bartlett. He also had Moon Racer in the Bumper. But I didn’t mind that because I was on myself at a reasonably good ante-post price. My biggest winner of the Festival. I celebrated by smashing my half pint of guiness into the ground in front of the big screen and taking a bow. A bloke in a fluffy-hooded parka came up and wrapped his arms round me. “Did you win or lose?” he shouted. Really?
All that winning took some serious celebrating. This is where our exquisite pad in Cheltenham came into its own. And where Nev’s in Bourton didn’t. Fed up with paying £40 taxi fares, he headed home after racing on the last bus. Conversely, with the knowledge of only a short stagger home smugly tucked in our exit plans, Si and I picked up the craic in town. A few beers and a tasty curry were on the agenda.
We smashed the former and utterly bombed on the latter. The
highlight of the boozers was the Bath Arms at the end of the night. The stars
of the show in this intimate local were not the assorted festival goers, but a
revelling birthday party crowd who took turns to dance on the chairs and tables.
One of the lads trying to elicit the affection of birthday girl slapped down
some eye-popping moves reminiscent of the helicopter dance by the beanpole in
the Ladbrokes’ advert. Si thought we could do better, but thankfully, we
decided against putting that assertion to the test.
Finding a curry proved to be a challenge too far. The first
restaurant was full of loud xenophobes; the second turned out to be a basement
bar; and the third was rather too fine dining in price. The greasy
chicken kebab and cardboard chips we ended up with from a takeaway joint was a
total fail.
Nev was with us the next night when we celebrated our
winners in the Queens Hotel, the legendary, almost mythical base of JP McManus
and venue of the finest party in town: witness the gentleman on dance floor who
could have passed for John Gosden in his heavyweight cashmere overcoat, navy Italian
suit, silk tie, flapping members’ badge and flashing black brogues, giving the
Kaiser Chiefs large and punching the air with each Ruby, Ruby, Ruby, Ruby
belted out by the band; or the group of young guys in front of us who had quite
clearly clubbed together to buy the company of a couple of escorts for the
evening and were awkwardly groping their way around their trophies who
discreetly wagged fingers and whispered the rules when the lads went too far.
All human life…
We shipped out early on Thursday morning. My call. Si was
well up for another day at the track, but the bookies were laying evens that my
liver would pack up fractionally before my wallet, well ahead of the Kim Muir
amateurs’ race.
Chris gave us a lift to the rail station. Above and beyond.
If they had put their gaff on TripAdvisor, we would all have given it the full
five blobs. There was further ticket trouble for Nev. This time the return rail
ticket. He had to upgrade to an off-peak ticket from a super saver just to get
through the barriers.
Uxizandre was my biggest winner on the Thursday, though it
should have been bigger. The Alan King inmate is in my 40 to follow for the
season, but I had lost confidence in this exuberant jumper and had only backed
him to small stakes. I thought he had lost form. It was good ground he was
waiting for. And a galvanising ride helped. McCoy at his brilliant best aboard
his last ever Festival winner.
The star of that electric Thursday was not Uxizandre though,
but Vautour in the JLT. Ruby was buzzing after he climbed down from one of the
cleanest, boldest most exhilarating rounds of jumping seen at the track by a
novice in a good few years. It reminded me of Master Minded winning his first
Champion Chase when audible intakes of breath greeted some of the breathtaking
leaps that day. A dream Gold Cup renewal in 2016 is already being plotted by
commentators that involves a triple-handed Mullins with Vautour, RSA winner Don
Poli and this year’s blue ribband runner up Djakadam taking on stunning
all-the-way novice winner Coneygree.
All-the-way winners were a real feature of this classic
Festival. Eight or so horses made all or nearly all to win big Grade 1s and
handicaps alike. The usual win-strike rate for front runners is two or three across the entire piece. It’s probably not a new trend, rather a mark of the
quality of horses we’ve been treated to this year in a high-class exhibition.
£9.58. That was my total profit after 27 races and months of
agonising. Head above water. Barely. There were some near misses though. The
big one that got away was Road To Riches in the Gold Cup. My most confident
bet. Landing that would have been a game changer. Whilst better ground would
have been ideal, there are no complaints. He ran his race and was beaten by a
tremendous horse on the day, who did not put a foot wrong.
I’m not sure that is how the Ladies of The Lamb saw it though.
Earlier in the week, a certain Ms
Johnson had e-mailed the good ladies and said:
“With a combination of the Cheltenham Festival and a boozy lunch at the Atkinsons in the offing, you should really know better than to leave me with the kitty. Let’s just say, after a few beers and glasses of wine it again seemed to be a good idea to get Mr Atkinson to put the tenner to good use by turning it into lots of tenners using his enormous skill and judgement.
Dave – please would you let us know which ‘sure thing’ we should cheer for on Friday as, I hope you realise, the hopes and dreams of the Ladies of the Lamb are resting on this.”
Sadly, Road To Riches proved to be more like a cul-de-sac for
the ladies’ ambitions as well as my own.
Fantasy Festival was an epic this year. Played out once
again in the pressure cooker of the Barley Mow. Doubles had been landed all
week to set up a dramatic final day. Running up to the Gold Cup, my Bruv was
holding a slender advantage over Bryn. For some inexplicable reason, he decided
to go all in on Silviniaco Conti, rather than playing a canny hand going in to
the final competition race, the Grand Annual. Shedding his usual cloak of caution, Bruv predictably went
down in a glorious ball of flame, handing the trophy and £170 notes to
Bryn.
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| Bruv has crashed and burnt |
Many beers and then whiskies were consumed and yet it was
probably a more restrained affair than last year. Certainly in the sense that
we didn’t descend into arm-wrestling competitions; most people got back to
their actual homes as oppose to other peoples’; and Col didn’t blow as many raspberries
on the exposed bellies of variously assembled punters. Col remains the most
enthusiastic and committed cheerleader (minus pom-pom) of our involvement in
this monster Festival and its associated competitions. He landed a spectacular acca
on that final day and strolled out of the pub declaring the week to be “better than
Christmas”.
It was inevitably Nev who brought the curtain down this year, via e-mail the following Monday:
It was inevitably Nev who brought the curtain down this year, via e-mail the following Monday:
“Just another week to forget - had to pay yet another taxi to get home on Saturday morning as I awoke late somewhere. It might have been Canning Town. Only twenty notes this time...”Until next year.
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