Five-day Cheltenham would dilute Festival

THERE has always been an air of inevitably about the Cheltenham Festival moving from four days to five.

So when trade paper The Racing Post revealed on Friday that The Jockey Club had kickstarted a consultation process that could potentially lead to a five-day Festival by 2024, then nobody should be overly surprised.

It also wasn’t a shock that the first to be offered their opinion were leading owners and trainers, who would not mind more opportunities of winning races at the Festival. The event attracted more than 280,000 spectators this year, so inflated prices post-Covid didn’t deter many racegoers from attending. So what’s the problem of milking jump racing’s biggest cash cow even further?

Well, put simply, there are not enough horses to justify a five-day festival. The proposed schedule would increase races from 28 to 30, which isn’t overly substantial. However, the number of races each day would go down from seven to six. With prices going through the roof, frequent Festival racegoers might be unimpressed in paying more for essentially less racing each day.

Another issue is diluting the quality even further and certain races cutting up badly. There were 405 horses that ran in this year’s Cheltenham Festival and that, excluding the pandemic year, was the lowest number since 2005 when Cheltenham moved from a three-day meeting to four. The average number of runners per race fell from 19.5 to 14.5.

There are more opportunities for top-class horses to dodge each other. Further tinkering will kill off ante-post betting, too. People had to endure the farce of where Galopin Des Champs would go for weeks, and see him head for a four-runner Grade One Turners Novices’ Chase that utterly fell apart. Prices for next year’s Festival are already diabolical and adding more races presents an increased likelihood of the dominant trainers spreading their horses around. Top races will thin out and become glorified processions or weak renewals.

I hope Cheltenham listens to the fears of punters… you can have too much of a good thing.