Only a tiny proportion of those at the Cheltenham Festival this week will have ever sat on a horse of any description, let alone one good enough to run in a Champion Chase, so it is just as well that people like Mick Fitzgerald are around to let the rest of us know what it’s like.
“Riding around the old course at Cheltenham is like watching a heart-beat,” the former jockey, who won the race in 1999 on Call Equiname, tells Standard Sport. “It’s just a rhythmic pump, there’s no room for fast-fast-slow. There’s no margin for error and you know that if you make a mistake it can be catastrophic.
