Build on last week, urges boss Hooper

Expand on what we did in the first part of Exeter clash, says Bath DoR – Page 53

The safest bet of the week is that this will be a Cheltenham Festival like no other, writes Richard Bache. All of us who make the annual pilgrimage to Cheltenham for the Festival have our own rituals.

They will be disrupted this year, no doubt, but nevertheless we’ll be tuned into ITV on Tuesday lunchtime in keen anticipation for the West’s biggest annual sporting event. The approximately 250,000 people who go to the Cheltenham Festival each year go for different reasons, of course.

For some it is all about the racing, for others it is all about the sociaising, for most it is a combination of the two.

I’ll miss having a Guinness with a fried breakfast on Tuesday morning - I don’t think it is a ritual I’ll duplicate at home...

But more than that I’ll miss chewing the fat with friends before the racing starts, each talking various degrees of nonsense about who’s a certainty to win The Arkle and losing a couple of pounds playing cards in a Cheltenham pub before we head up to the course.

The anticipation before ‘the roar’ ahead of the first race is magic and in many ways I view it as the harbinger of spring and the promise of better things to come.

It will be a virtual roar this year when the racing starts, but hopefully after the bleakest of years we’re not far from the start of better things to come.

A few winners this week will definitely add to this impression!

Enough ink has probably been spilled on whether it was right or wrong for Cheltenham to go ahead last year.

I admit to going on the Tuesday and Friday last year - so have a biased view. I checked London Underground passenger data yesterday for this period in 2020 and on the Tuesday when The Festival started it was running at 90% of usual levels, i.e. 4 million journeys per day, reinforcing my view that Cheltenham was unfairly singled out for criticism. By the Friday that had dipped to 72% though, showing how quickly things changed over the course of four days.

The ongoing controversy allied to the recent Gordon Elliott scandal - means this year’s renewal will be under massive scrutiny.

Here’s hoping that the action on the track is top class, goes ahead safely and we can all be back in person this time next year.