Cheltenham National Hunt Festival Preview 2008 (5 March 2008)
by Stewart Nash
Seamus Mullins, Tanya Stevenson, Matt Williams, Wayne Hutchinson.
The Club’s biggest event of the year, also causes the most work for the Committee and the most stress. Will the staging and speaker system arrive? – Will the guests turn up? – Will the audience turn up? – Will I think of anything sensible to say to lead the panel through the four days and 25 races that make up the biggest and best jump race meeting staged in Great Britain?
Well the answer to the first three questions is Yes and as for the fourth that is up to you to judge but I will say I always go home a lot more relaxed once its all over for another year.
Our panel this year brought together some old (metaphorically speaking) friends of the WBRC. Tanya Stevenson was back for a third year and provides a great understanding of the betting market as well as the formbook. Noland was Tanya’s ‘Bismarck’ that proved very much on the mark. Matt Williams, who had arrived at Newbury having done a similar job on a lunchtime panel at Fontwell and Galway the day before similarly expressed some very clear views about the prospects of certain well backed horses. Seamus Mullins can provide a good insight into prospects of many of the Irish runners whilst Wayne Hutchinson based at Alan King’s Barbury Castle stables provided some honest views on that stables inmates. Wayne attended our preview whilst waiting to go into hospital for an operation and we wished him well for that and hope to see him back riding before too long.
A show of hands suggested that two thirds of the audience favoured Kauto Star to get the better of Denman in the Gold Cup. I can only hope they didn’t lose too much backing that opinion.
David Ashforth again included our preview in his Racing Post Festival Preview tour and many of you will have read his comments on the night. David noted that the panel’s favourite comment was that the horse “has done nothing wrong” which is presumably why their connections fancied them to run well in their respective races.
Thank you to everyone who helped organise the preview – we had an attendance of around 150 and were able to donate £400 to the Thames Valley and Chiltern Air Ambulance Appeal.