Welcome to the wired and wonderful Cheltenham Festival

The Cheltenham Festival in the UK is described in family newspapers as the ultimate test of thoroughbred jump racing – but in the grittier press as an ultimate test of wallets and livers.

It a peculiarly British (and Irish) institution – an iconic annual social and sporting bash that most of the rest of the world remains in blissful ignorance of.

The Brits might have exported and ingrained a lot of their favourite past-times around the world from colonial times – tea-drinking, gardening, cricket, football, horse racing on the flat etc – but somehow jumps racing didn’t catch on in many places. Maybe it was the upper-class/working class egalitarianism of the Cheltenham whirlwind that was a bit rich for the diligent civil servants of the provinces.

Hurdle and steeplechase

In short, Cheltenham is up there with Wimbledon and the Open Championship. In South Africa, we still hear about the Grand National steeplechase at Aintree, but Cheltenham is as a bigger event – a rowdy, wired bit of lunacy.

The four-day gathering is the “championships” of what Brits call national hunt – hurdle and steeplechase.

Close to 250,000 people pass through the turnstiles and last year bookmaker Paddy Power estimated that £1-billion (R22-billion!) was wagered on the outcome of the 26 races. This one event accounts for 10% of the British Tote’s annual on-course betting turnover at more than 1,000 meetings.

I once had a smart bookie friend who went to Cheltenham in March each year to take on the British punters and came home flushed with excitement and cash. He made enough money at that one race meeting to “retire” for the rest of the year.

The Irish

The whole shebang is helped along by a phenomenon known as The Irish. A third of the participants travel from across the Irish Sea to England’s lovely Chiltern Hills northwest of London with a belligerent glint in the eye and primed wallets and sights trained on 250 on-course bookies.

St Patrick’s Day often falls during the week and things get a tad alcoholic. This week it’s on Friday, the climax of the festival that features the headline act, the Cheltenham Gold Cup. This is the blue riband of the game and the podium of legends like Arkle, Desert Orchid and Best Mate.

The annual booze order is for 20,000 bottles of champagne and 30,000 of wine, 240,000 beers and 220,000 pints of Guinness. Singing and fighting have been known.

For the Irish jumps racing is religion, and (strangely) the genteel town of Cheltenham a shrine. The devotion doesn’t go unrewarded: Irish horses, jockeys and trainers often dominate.

Istabraq

The most famous Irishman at Cheltenham is The Sundance Kid – aka JP McManus, sometime owner of Man U – who’s won and lost many millions, including on his own two-time Champion Hurdle winner Istabraq.

There’s a story about another Irish gambler who won enough money on Istabraq in 1998 to pay off his home mortgage, but a day later lost the house in another wager. “It was only a small house,” he shrugged.

Most tipster’s nap bet of the week is Constitution Hill in Tuesday’s Champion Hurdle. Also on the opening day, Honeysuckle and ace female jockey Rachael Blackmore will be a popular choice.

Friday’s Gold Cup is a tough one. But a quick scan through the myriad of tipsters indicates it should be fought out between Galopin Des Champs, Bravemansgame and Noble Yeats.

Cheltenham is live on DStv’s Racing 240 channel this week, Tuesday to Friday afternoons, with betting available on Saftote. And wonderful viewing it will make.