From the boos that rolled down from the enclosures as Tiger Roll was beaten on his final start on Wednesday to the songs that rang out for every winning favourite on Friday, the returning fans at Cheltenham provided the mood music for this year’s Festival and the effect was electrifying. After the lifeless longueurs between races in 2021, the celebrations and receptions made the Festival complete once again; the record four-day crowd of 280,627 proved beyond doubt that a year away had only increased the appetite for the unique Cheltenham experience.
They will spread the word over the next few months, telling tales of what it was like to be one of the 73,875 who saw Rachael Blackmore make history aboard A Plus Tard in Friday’s Gold Cup. Or recalling the high drama of Wednesday’s Champion Chase in the rain, as Shishkin folded, Chacun Pour Soi departed and Energumene prevailed. Honeysuckle’s Champion Hurdle and the unbridled joy of Flooring Porter’s owners after the Stayers’ were other images that will lodge long in the memory, seeding the ticket sales for Cheltenham 2023.
British stables also put up unexpected resistance to the Irish onslaught, until the final afternoon at least, when a first greenwash on a single day at the Festival meant the visitors chalked off one of the few records that did not fall their way 12 months ago.
Even after 27 more races, and no end of drama and excitement, the 22-length success of Nicky Henderson’s Constitution Hill in the opening Supreme Novice Hurdle on Tuesday still stands out as the finest individual performance of the week. Timeform was sufficiently moved to suggest it was the best by a novice since it started rating National Hunt horses in the 1960s and “on paper … would have been good enough” to beat Honeysuckle in the Champion Hurdle. An immediate head-to-head with Honeysuckle at Punchestown next month is probably too much to hope for, but the five-year-old Constitution Hill promises to fly the flag for British jumping at the Festival for seasons to come.
Haydock
1.00 Cartonne 1.35 Burrows Diamond (nb) 2.10 L’Incorrigible 2.45 Generator City (nap) 3.20 Nora The Xplorer 3.55 Godrevy Point
Ffos Las
1.55 Rossbeigh Strand 2.30 Pay The Pilot 3.05 Rosearelli 3.40 Smash The Lamp 4.15 Shaman Du Berlais 4.50 Jaunty Freyja 5.25 You Say Nothing
Ludlow
2.20 Whizz Kid 2.55 Marettimo 3.30 Tikitov 4.05 Tide Times 4.40 Coolnaugh Haze 5.10 Equus Millar 5.40 Stratagem
From the first race to the last, when Banbridge completed the Irish clean sweep, it was a Festival that left everyone wanting more. And that, inevitably, will lead to renewed interest in the possibility of a fifth day at Cheltenham, to maximise the revenue from what is, by many measures, British racing’s biggest week of the year.
From some angles, it looks like an open-and-shut case. This year’s attendance figures were 68,567, 64,431, 73,754 and 73,875. While there is some room for improvement on Wednesday’s number, the record four-day total is, for practical purposes, close to capacity. A fifth day on Saturday, in theory, would boost the overall figure by 25%.
Ascot’s fifth day at the Royal meeting in June is now its busiest of the week. Surely a fifth day at Cheltenham would be a similar money-spinner, sending the weekly attendance soaring past 300,000 and on towards 350,000? If it were that simple, though, it would have happened several years ago and while the business brains at Jockey Club Racecourses may yet prove to be plotting a fifth day from 2024, an off-the-record suggestion from insiders in the past has always been that the case is not as clearcut as it might seem. Attendance would rocket but at what long-term costs elsewhere? Corporate hospitality, for instance, is a big part of the Festival’s business plan and is all but nonexistent on Saturdays.
A five-day Festival would also cannibalise the current four-day schedule to create six-race cards, short-changing the fans of the current format. Will the horses be there to fill it or will the overall competitiveness decline? And where do you put the Gold Cup? On Friday, to maximise hospitality revenue? Or on the new Saturday card, maintaining its place as the climax of the meeting but now in competition for viewers (and race-day staff) with Premier League football and the Six Nations’ rugby?
Market Rasen 1.00 Presuming Ed 1.35 Kamaxos 2.10 Hawthorn Cottage 2.45 Ardmayle (nb) 3.20 Royal Pretender (nap) 3.55 Trixster
Wetherby 1.26 Hungry Tiger 2.01 Learntalot 2.36 Ecume Atlantique 3.11 Antunes 3.46 Uncle Alastair 4.21 Manintheshadows 4.56 Malinas Island 5.31 Largy Train
Exeter 1.53 Earth Business 2.26 Wind Tor 3.01 Classic Ben 3.36 Ballybreeze 4.11 Indirocco 4.46 Park Hill Dancer
Comparisons with Royal Ascot’s fifth day are risky. That meeting’s highlight, the Gold Cup, has always been on Thursday. Saturday has become something of a family day, with a Group One that was created for the occasion as the centrepiece. Ascot is also an hour away from central London by train and a 10-minute walk from the station. Cheltenham, as racegoers who endure all manner of travel-related miseries will confirm, is not. For these reasons and more, the Festival is never likely to be a jolly day out for the whole family to enjoy. It has an edge: Christmas, but for grownups.
The 2022 Festival, as it should, left everyone wanting more. After a fifth day on Saturday, we might all find ourselves joining in with a chorus of “I want to go home”.
