The Cheltenham Festival: always remarkable

As the sporting world tracks an orbit that will take many events around the far side of the moon for a while, we thought we’d share with you some of the best highlights of the recently completed Cheltenham Festival.

Many congratulations to all involved behind the scenes in the staging of the event in what must have been very trying conditions, especially all those in the customer-facing and back-of-house hospitality functions. Almost 69,000 fans attended Day Four, on Friday, for the running of the Gold Cup. Think about how you source all of the essentials sufficient for the venue’s bathrooms at this time.

DAIMANI’s official VIP ticketing hospitality options for horse racing and equestrian can be purchased here.

At the festival’s end, Irish Times’ columnist Keith Duggan painted a picture of one sporting fixture that refused absolutely to be blown off course by the coronavirus.

‘Damned if the horsey set - waxy of jacket, Range of Rover, tweedy of cap, jaunty of stride, always up for a stiff one, never afraid of a sneaky fag and always slightly baffled by the fact that the entire world is not swooning over this filly or that four-year-old; damned if the Festival of festivals, that never-sunny, glorious corner of England where the atmosphere is always 1986 and Dawn Run cantering into history while beetroot-faced men hurl trilbys and fedoras in the air and the women exude a Jackie Collins glam and where there’s always time for one more glass of bubbly . . . damned if this timeless paradise of horse-iness is going to be thrown off course by some poxy little global pandemic.’

Duggan’s full review can be found here.

For the most extraordinary upset of the final day, Day Four, scroll to 1.41 in this video for the running of the JCB Triumph Hurdle where race leader Goshen fell at the last fence while holding a 10-length lead. Then 2.11 for the running of the Magners Gold Cup.