CHELTENHAM. A spa town on the edge of the Cotswolds with more festivals than any other place in Britain.
The focus of those festivals differs vastly. Literature, cricket, jazz, science, wine and poetry to name just half a dozen but the biggest is, undoubtedly, the National Hunt Festival.
In mid-March it dominates the town and surrounding area and is estimated to be worth around £100million to the local economy.
For racing fans it is the focus of the jumps season but, depending on which side of the fence you sit, it is either the most wonderful four days of sporting perfection or an over-powering monster that bullies the rest of the season into second-rate submission.
To start with, it cannot be argued that the Cheltenham Festival has been anything other than a huge success.
Jam-packed stands, hospitality waiting lists and bank-busting betting turnover. Most sports can only dream of having an event as successful as those four days in March.
The handicaps are so oversubscribed there’s even consolation races for those horses who failed to make the cut, held at Kempton the day after the Festival closes.
The best of the best from Britain and Ireland – as well as a few from France and further afield – arrive at Cheltenham hoping to be crowned champion in the week’s top contests.
Those championship trophies are etched with the greatest names in National Hunt history.
Mill House, Arkle, Desert Orchid, Best Mate, Kauto Star, Badsworth Boy, One Man, Moscow Flyer, Master Minded, Sprinter Sacre, Hatton’s Grace, Sir Ken, Persian War, Night Nurse, Monksfield, Sea Pigeon, Dawn Run, See You Then, Istabraq, Hurricane Fly, Baracouda, Inglis Drever and Big Bucks’. There are plenty more. While the list isn’t quite endless, it certainly seems that way when you write down all the great names.
The clamour to join them on those rolls of honour has never been higher. Too high according to some.
The argument that the obsession with victory at the Cheltenham Festival among owners and trainers had become detrimental to the top races outside the great meeting reared its head again when only five runners contested the Grade 1 Tingle Creek Chase at Sandown.
Nicky Henderson’s decision to withdraw Altior on the eve of the race due to the testing ground left Politologue clear to win the race for the second time.
Of course, everyone wanted to see Altior. One of the truly great, if not greatest, two-mile chasers will be 11 in a couple of weeks. The end of his superb career is drawing ever nearer.
But Politologue is the reigning champion chaser and he faced two young horses with huge potential in Greaneteen and Rouge Vif at Sandown.
The way some carried on you would have thought the Tingle Creek used to be double-figure fields stuffed with Grade 1 winners ever year.
A glance back to the good ol’ days shows anything but. Trawling back 30 years to 1990, Young Snugfit won the Tingle Creek. Did he beat a dozen runners all arriving on the back of impressive wins? No, he beat four rivals, who had all been beaten last time out. That’s exactly the same number Politologue saw off this season.
A year later, Young Snugfit finished second behind Waterloo Boy as six runners contested the Sandown thriller and there was again five runners when David Nicholson’s ace made it back-to-back wins in 1992.
Back in those days it was a limited handicap so there was even more of incentive to run and the pattern did not change when it became a Grade 1 level weights contest in 1994. In fact, the Tingle Creek attracted an average of 6.1 runners in the 1990s.
It’s a theme repeated across other Grade 1 races. Epatante made a winning return on her first start as Champion Hurdler when landing the six-runner Fighting Fifth Hurdle at Newcastle a few weeks ago.
Rewind 30 years and you find the reigning Champion Hurdler Beech Road easily beating four runners in the Fighting Fifth. A year later Royal Derbi came out on top in a four-runner race.
Go back even further to Arkle, many fans’ idea of the greatest steeplechaser of them, and you’ll find he only beat a combined total of 10 rivals when winning his three Cheltenham Gold Cups. His only King George win also came in a field of four. Those old boys don’t mention that when lecturing about the golden age of jump racing.
No one loves wallowing in nostalgia more than me. I loved the horses I watched as a teenager in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s and only have the fondest of memories of racing back in those days.
Those memories are not as hazy as some much more recent races and a check of the facts shows the Grade 1 races throughout the winters of my youth rarely did attract big fields.
This weekend’s Long Walk Hurdle at Ascot has attracted a double-figure field. That only happened three times in the 1990s and then it was a high of 11 runners.
By their very nature there are less top-class horses than middling handicappers so the feature Grade 1 contests are never going attract huge numbers.
When you consider that the quality of Irish jump racing has never been stronger – they had 24 of the 59 runners in the five open championship Grade 1s at Cheltenham last season – it’s not hard to work out why we don’t get big fields outside of the Festival.
It’s not that the best horses spend all season swerving each other so they arrive at the Cheltenham Festival with reputations intact it’s just that there isn’t dozens of top-class horses knocking around at one time and there never were.
We could all reminisce and tell the kids it’s not like it used to be in our day. The truth is, despite what those who want to beat down racing’s one overwhelming success story will tell you, it very much is.
