Four days to find out if the festival has lost its shine

Sluggish ticket sales and lack of competitive fields is worrying but expect plenty of feelgood moments this week,

- Greg Wood

There have been rainsoaked festivals and freezing festivals since National Hunt's meeting showpiece started to emerge from the winter season to tower over the racing landscape. There was no festival at all in 2001, due to the foot-and-mouth crisis, and another behind closed doors during the third Covid lockdown in 2021. Throughout that time, all the way back to the mid-1980s, the key indicators including the number of races, prize money, attendance and betting turnover - have always been trending up.

The notion of "peak Cheltenham", if it was ever considered at all, was off in the middle distance, perhaps when the track managed to sell out all four days. So the jumping fraternity will head to the West Country in a somewhat uncertain frame of mind, with Britain's stables facing their now annual battering from the Irish and the possibility, at least, that peak Cheltenham has been and gone.

It is just two years since the crowds came roaring back after the spectator-less festival, just as they had after it succumbed to foot-andmouth. The four-day aggregate attendance was a record of nearly 281,000, with almost 74,000 crammed in for the Thursday and Friday cards.

Tuesday's total of 68,567 was a record too and a subsequent decision to cap attendance for all four days at 68,500, to ensure that "the festival remains an attractive and enjoyable experience for the long term", seemed sensible, with numbers already at, or above, that level on all but the second afternoon.

Twelve months later, it was a very different picture. The post-pandemic bounce fell flat and attendance on the first three days went through the floor, leading to an aggregate of 240,603 that was 14% down year-on-year.