Slack Jawed Babbling

Cheltenham town is increasingly transformed by the Festival with each passing year. Walking down the High Street on the second morning felt like visiting a charity fete on steroids. For raffle tickets, think Paddy Power’s cheerleader girls handing out racecards; for the village choir, hear beat-boxing and street rap; and for the fancy dress show, see the brazen Ladies Day outfits and St Patrick’s leprechauns. Try telling the bloke air-walking in the zorbing ball at 11am that a more traditional thrill might be apple bobbing on the green. In fact that giant plastic bubble was a perfect metaphor for the Festival. An event suspended in time and space, isolated from the routines and rituals of day-to-day life. Looking back from over the horizon of another week simply accentuates that feeling. Everything has returned to normal. It is hard to recall the intoxication of Monday’s pre-festival triggers: unfathomable declarations, head-spinning bets and stomach twisting anticipation. The Fes

I received an interesting e-mail today from those nice people at SBAT about the 10 biggest controversies at the Cheltenham Festival. Interesting departure, I thought, from the usual Festival build up angles. The info graph is below in full.  Some of these controversies I remember well. No 10: I was at the rail for the £50m fall when Ruby Walsh asked the wonder mare Annie Power for a big one under absolutely no pressure at all, and took a crashing fall. The air was filled with the confetti of shredded betting slips.  I do not believe for a moment that this was part of any conspiracy theory. However, it is interesting to see the scrutiny under which Walsh’s last fence blunders have now come. Kevin Blake from At The Races undertook some excellent research to split the myth from fact around Ruby's final fence choking. His exhaustive analysis found that:  Ruby Walsh’s mounts fell or unseated him at the final obstacle more than twice as often as the average of the mounts of the

I have unconsciously switched into full slack-jawed-Cheltenham-babble mode. I know this because of the reactions of Mrs A. Only this morning I was criticising the inaccuracy of the weather forecasts and how difficult this made analysis of the likely underfoot conditions at Prestbury Park a week on Tuesday; and that the watering policy of clerk of the course Simon Claisse was so unscientific that the whole scenario all but precluded rational thought anyway. On glancing up from the sink where I was vigorously swirling mugs in soapy water as if they were entirely to blame for this sate of affairs, I noticed Mrs A had adopted an expression somewhere between distracted mirth and shrug-shouldered tolerance. “Am I wittering on a bit?” I inquired. “Don’t worry dear. I’ve had twenty years of this, I know what to expect come early March”. As I said to a mate earlier today, I reckon she’s currently ignoring roughly 75% of everything I say (as oppose to the usual 50%). Luckily