Remembering the Cheltenham Festival that never happened – 20 years later
Organisers battled to save the event in 2001 from an outbreak of foot-and-mouth but after several fraught weeks it was off
Afew weeks before the 2001 Cheltenham Festival, the racecourse’s managing director and head vet were driving back to Gloucestershire from a dinner in London when the lead item on the 11pm news sent a shiver down their spines; confirmation of the first outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease for 20 years.
“The thing about it was that we were so close to the Festival,” recalls Edward Gillespie, Cheltenham’s supremo at the time.
With many parallels to last year and Covid, it was a fast-moving scenario. The first confirmation of the outbreak of foot-and-mouth was announced on February 21. A day later nine of 11 point-to-points that weekend were cancelled and a race meeting at Newcastle, which was in an exclusion zone near to one of the first outbreaks, was also called off.
Within five days a crisis meeting was being held between the British
Horseracing Board (as it was), the Racecourse Association, the Animal Health Trust and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. A day later racing was suspended for seven days – as much as anything to give the sport space to think.
But the Festival was still due to go ahead. On March 1 the Irish government announced there would be no Irish runners. Four days later the French followed suit. On March 7, the Festival was postponed when it emerged that 23 sheep had been grazing near the two-mile start. A new date was set for mid-april, but the appetite had gone, and the 2001 Festival was finally put out of its misery on April 1, a week before the Grand National did take place.
“Of all the risk assessments we had done, sheep was not one,” reflects Gillespie. “Those weeks are not anything I’d want to put anyone through. The Irish weren’t coming, the farming community was up in arms, the French weren’t coming – those were the years of Francois Doumen – and you could see the smoke from a pyre of carcasses from the course.”
Racing tried to argue that there was no scientific evidence that the
movement of horses was a risk, but the Government dug in its heels and the sport limped along. “Eventually we were cancelled a second time because we fell in an exclusion zone of a case, and, although it turned out to be negative, we were pretty grateful. We’d fallen out with everyone and public opinion was against us.
“It got a bit daft. The Sun superimposed photographs of Simon Claisse [clerk of the course] and my face on sheep. It gives you a sense of how angry people were.”
There were, of course, positives. “A lot of the Irish came over for that November and it definitely moved that meeting up a notch,” says Gillespie. “As happened last year, it is not within the racecourse’s powers to cancel, it depends on the advice from the right authority, so although it suffered some reputational damage last year by going ahead, we were spared it.”
There were, however, moments which Gillespie now looks back on with amusement. He went to Dublin to meet with Charles Murless, his opposite at Punchestown, to see if the Irish would accept the new date in April, which would clash with their big meeting. It was one of the shortest meetings he ever attended. “He didn’t hang around,” recalls Gillespie. “He made it clear in a very few minutes we had no support.
“I also remember taking a call from Sir Peter O’sullevan who was, on occasion, spokesperson for JP Mcmanus. He said they would be very grateful if we could run the Champion Hurdle in November [Istabraq had been due to attempt a record-breaking fourth win].
“Best Mate was spared running in the Arkle Trophy and I knew Golden Miller had also missed a novice chase before his string of Gold Cups because 1931 was cancelled for frost. I remember wondering if it was an omen and whether something would come out of it.” Best Mate went on to win three Gold Cups.