Thrills and spills at the Cheltenham festival but low crowds still a problem

The Guardian

15-03-2025

A sense that anything could happen on any given day – a sense that had perhaps been receding at Cheltenham's festival in recent years – roared back with a vengeance in the West Country, leaving the bookmakers' social media feeds searching for ways to say 'We're all RICH!' that did not rub too much salt into the punters' wounds. 'Firmly in front,' was how one press release put it, after 'a week of mixed results' for the backers.
Quite the understatement. There were seven odds-on shots, equalling the record since it moved to four days in 2005. Just two managed to get across the line: Kopek Des Bordes, at 4-6, in the opening Supreme Novice Hurdle, and Lossiemouth, also a 4-6 shot, in the Mares' Hurdle, the same day.
Elsewhere, it was a painful week for backers of the short-priced favourites, with the major lowlights, in the feature events on Tuesday and Friday, being Constitution Hill's fall at 1-2 for the Champion Hurdle, and Galopin Des Champs' rather lacklustre performance behind Inothewayurthinkin as the 8-13 favourite for Friday's Gold Cup.
Jonbon, another feature-race favourite, was beaten in Wednesday's Champion Chase. By the time the 100-1 shot Poniros, previously unraced over hurdles, came over the top to beat the well-fancied Lulamba and East India Dock in Friday's Triumph Hurdle, it must have felt to many punters as though the festival was trolling them.
At the same time, though, there will be some punters who enjoyed an excellent week. Over the 28 races, the favourites showed a small level-stakes profit, thanks mainly to the sterling efforts of market leaders in the big handicaps. The favourites' strike-rate in handicaps was 38%, way ahead of the mean since the turn of the century of 15%, and Myretown's gritty, front-running success to land a gamble from 12-1 to 13-2 in Tuesday's Ultima will live long in the memory of anyone who backed him.
Nor does it hurt to be reminded once in a while that finding winners at the festival is not supposed to be easy. The meeting's popularity and fascination depend on the promise that it is the most wildly unpredictable ride of the racing year and uncertainty, after all, is a key selling point of any spectator sport. Unlike a play or a movie, there is no script. The audience pays to see a story being written in front of their eyes or, in racing's case, a series of intense, volatile mini-dramas. On that basis, the spectators got exactly what they were paying for.
It will be fascinating to see whether the lacklustre attendance on the first three days – down for the third year in a row – will come to be seen as a turning point in the narrative of regular falls in festival attendance.
The total attendance at this year's festival was 218,839, a drop of 4.9% on last year's figure of 229,999, which takes the overall decline since the record crowds of 2022, the first post-pandemic festival, to 22%. Since the Gold Cup crowd has held up well at, or very close to, the cap of 68,500, the drop has been almost entirely on the first three days, from 206,752 in 2022 to 151,013 this year. The meeting has lost more than a fifth of its live audience since 2022, but on the first three days, it is down by more than a quarter.
Guy Lavender, the track's new chief executive, shrewdly headed off too much day-by-day agonising over the crowd figures by conceding in an open letter last weekend that the overall attendance would be down. The feedback and data from his first festival will now be pored over to establish what the ex-Para might see as a bridgehead, to start the process of driving the numbers back up.
Sign up to The Recap
The best of our sports journalism from the past seven days and a heads-up on the weekend's action
after newsletter promotion
The decision to expand the areas where racegoers are allowed to take their drinks certainly seemed to be welcomed and that numbers were down will also have made the overall experience – from getting to the track to moving around on the day – more enjoyable.
Lavender said at the outset of the meeting that his aim was 'delivering unforgettable days out for our customers' and the overall balance of the feedback from his first festival in charge may well be positive.
The next step, though, is to build back the live audience from Tuesday to Thursday while avoiding what might be seen as the Prestbury paradox: that the more you pack 'em in, the less likely they are to have an experience that they want to repeat. He has come across thus far as a man with a plan. It will be 12 months, at least, before we find out whether it is a good one.