Returning fans turn Cheltenham Festival into Christmas for grownups

From the boos that rolled down from the enclosures as Tiger Roll was beaten on his final start on Wednesday to the songs that rang out for every winning favourite on Friday, the returning fans at Cheltenham provided the mood music for this year’s Festival and the effect was electrifying. After the lifeless longueurs between races in 2021, the celebrations and receptions made the Festival complete once again; the record four-day crowd of 280,627 proved beyond doubt that a year away had only increased the appetite for the unique Cheltenham experience.

They will spread the word over the next few months, telling tales of what it was like to be one of the 73,875 people who saw Rachael Blackmore make history aboard A Plus Tard in Friday’s Gold Cup. Or recalling the high drama of Wednesday’s Champion Chase in the rain, as Shishkin folded, Chacun Pour Soi departed and Energumene prevailed. Honeysuckle’s Champion Hurdle and the unbridled joy of Flooring Porter’s owners after the Stayers’ were other images that will lodge long in the memory, seeding the ticket sales for Cheltenham 2023.

British stables also put up unexpected resistance to the Irish onslaught, until the final afternoon at least, when a first greenwash on a single day at the Festival meant the visitors chalked off one of the few records that did not fall their way 12 months ago.

Even after 27 more races and no end of drama and excitement, the 22-length success of Nicky Henderson’s Constitution Hill in the opening Supreme Novice Hurdle on Tuesday still stands out as the finest individual performance of the week. Timeform was sufficiently moved to suggest that it was the best by a novice since it started rating National Hunt horses in the 1960s and “on paper … would