Donn McClean: There Is Only So Far You Can Push The Cheltenham Festival Without Going Over The Edge

The Cheltenham Festival is a precious entity. It has become so over time and half by accident.

Built up by the passing of the years, nurtured by happenstance, its roots buried deeply in history and with the solid foundation that all of that gives.

And, as with any precious entity, you protect it, cultivate it, employ measures that will safeguard its worth, enhance its value.

Cheltenham does not have the absolute right to be the Olympics of National Hunt racing.

It is partly through happy coincidence that it has become that. It is the meeting into which the entire National Hunt season funnels, where champions are crowned and the wider world is watching.

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The Cheltenham Festival is in a hugely privileged position. It is where, above everywhere else and almost without exception, owners and trainers and jockeys and punters want to have winners.

Unlike Flat racing, where disparate meetings are dotted around the final throes of the season and debates ensue about the relative merits of the winners and the contenders, National Hunt racing has its definitive championships. The Champion Hurdler is the Champion Hurdler. No debate.

The Cheltenham Festival’s position in that regard has evolved over time. The first Cheltenham Festival in its current guise was probably staged in 1911, when the meeting returned to Cheltenham, with the first Stayers’ Hurdle run in 1912 and the first Gold Cup run in 1924, a hundred years ago.

It took a long time for Cheltenham to morph into the position that it currently enjoys, that it still enjoys. And yet, you could dismantle it in the blink of couple of poor decisions.

It is not that long ago that there were 18 races at the Cheltenham Festival. Three days, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, six races each day with three feature races, the Champion Hurdle, the Champion Chase and the Gold Cup, with no Ryanair Chase and the Stayers’ Hurdle run on the Thursday, 40 minutes before the Gold Cup.

There was a rarity value that went with a Cheltenham Festival winner then. Just 18 Cheltenham winners every year. The rarest thing is the most wonderful.

They added the Champion Bumper in 1992, presumably to ensure that there would be at least one Irish-trained winner (in 1989 there had been none), and they added the Coral Cup in 1993. Still just 20 races, still three days, still magical.

2005 was a watershed year, when they added five races, removed the Cathcart Chase, 24 races, and moved to four days. Six races each day.

It was a significant increase in the number of Cheltenham Festival races, in the number of Cheltenham Festival winners, from 18 to 24, an increase of 33%, but still the Festival thrived.

Then the creep began. The Mares’ Hurdle in 2008, the Martin Pipe Hurdle in 2009, the Jewson Chase in 2011, the Mares’ Novices’ Hurdle in 2016. That was 28 races, an increase of 55% on the 18-race meeting that had been the bedrock of the Festival.

Seven races per day, and all four days were full. The desire to add the Mares’ Chase in 2021 was realised by dropping the novices’ handicap chase.

Remember the talk of five days? It seems bizarre now that, not so long ago, the talk of five days was gaining traction. It wouldn’t be that much of an expansion, they said.

Just two more races, 30 in all, and move to five days, six races per day. Options on the extra races were in the general discourse: a veterans’ chase, a two-and-a-half-mile hurdle, a mares’ novices’ chase.

The attraction was obviously purely a commercial one. The Cheltenham Festival is a significant income-generator. By increasing to five days, the argument went, you increase the income generated significantly.

For a fairly scary but thankfully relatively brief period of time, a five-day Cheltenham Festival looked inevitable. Ultimately sense prevailed. The Golden Goose can only lay a finite number of eggs.

Of course, the Cheltenham Festival has a significant commercial value but, in seeking to maximise that, you run the risk of destroying the essence of it. Diluting its potency. 

And anyway, fundamentally, it is that very essence, the magic of Cheltenham, that was at the root of its commercial value in the first place.

We know now, as we suspected then, that a move to five days, to 30 races, would have been calamitous.

We know now too, if we are being honest with ourselves, that, in the current climate, 28 races is really too many. There is only so far that you can push without going over the edge.

Of course, nostalgia is not what it used to be. A return to three days and 18 races any time soon would almost certainly be too great a step.

Commercial reality dictates. But, as many people have argued recently, there is still a glaring need to cull the races now.

The average field size at this year’s Cheltenham Festival was down to 13.4, the lowest by far since 2016, when the Festival moved to 28 races.

Even in 2021, Covid year when they raced behind closed doors and owners couldn’t attend, the average field size was 14.4.

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Richard Forristal set out an alternative Cheltenham Festival programme in the Racing Post recently: drop the Turners Chase and the Ryanair Chase, drop the Albert Bartlett Hurdle and the Mares’ Novices’ Hurdle, force the horses who would have contested those races into the other championship races. Intensify the competition.

Still four days, but just six races each day and a reduction to 24 races in total. That makes lots of sense. Kevin Blake set out a number of proposals on ITV Racing recently, including the exclusion of novices from the open handicaps, again with the objective of increasing competition in the championship races.

A reduction in the number of races may not make commercial sense in the short term, but it is the long term that should be priority now for the custodians of National Hunt racing. 

There is a need for consolidation. Protect the essence of the Cheltenham Festival. Safeguard its position.

When you stretch an elastic band, you don’t know that you have stretched it too far until after you have reached breaking point.