NO LIVING TO THE MAX THIS YEAR
GUINNESS and ITV Racing will help Max McNeill ‘make the best of a bad job’ as one of the 2021 Cheltenham Festival’s absentee owners.
McNeill (below) expects to watch 10 runners, spearheaded by Triumph Hurdle favourite Tritonic, carry his colours over the meeting’s four days. But, with owners locked out of British racecourses since COVID-19 restrictions tightened at the start of the year, he’s forced to watch the action at home. “It’s frustrating,” admits McNeill, who founded Ultima Business Solutions, a sponsor on the opening day of the Festival.
“But we’ve got plenty of Guinness in, and we’ve got the ITV Racing coverage, which has been excellent. “Of course, it’s not the same, and you do miss it like hell. “But you make the best of a bad job.” But McNeill is apt to see the owners’ plight in context.
“I see people I know struggling,” he adds. “People have got it far worse than me.
“At least there is a light at the end of the tunnel – the government have given us a roadmap and the vaccination programme is going well.”
Gin and tonic in hand, McNeill recently played a starring role on ITV Racing — via Zoom — when toasting Tritonic’s success in the Adonis Juvenile Hurdle at Kempton.
And a return to the small screen looks inevitable if his silks — royal blue and white hoops, maroon sleeves and cap — make it into the Festival winner’s circle for the first time.
“That’s a big ‘if’,” laughs McNeill, whose hopes also include Escaria Ten in the National Hunt Novices’ Chase and Shearer — a nod to his allegiance to Blackburn Rovers — in the Weatherbys Champion Bumper.
“If we had a winner, it would be fantastic. Of course, you want to be there, but we would find a way of celebrating — socially distanced, of course!”