There’s an old line about how for every problem there’s a solution that’s simple, neat and wrong.
The Cheltenham Festival has a problem and there might even be simple neat solution. Returning to a three-day festival would be an embarrassing reverse for the Jockey Club. It’s no silver bullet to the festival’s slipping appeal either. But one thing it wouldn’t be is wrong.
There’s 20 years of evidence to judge the damage done by stretching racing’s biggest shop window to four days, more than enough time to avoid going all inscrutable and declaring it too early to say.
The rush to exploit racing’s golden goose has backfired. Cheltenham’s momentum string has been pulled too far. The job is to try to put some snap back into it.
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Countless figures fizzed around last week’s action but easily the starkest was the 41,949 official attendance returned for Day Two. That is the smallest festival crowd at Cheltenham in 32 years. Cheltenham’s capacity is 68,500. The place wasn’t even two-thirds full. That was for a Grade One card featuring the Queen Mother Champion Chase.
Only Gold Cup day was sold out. Tuesday’s 55,498 attendance was down from just over 60,000 in 2024. The Thursday crowd of 53,366 was encouraging for only being slightly less than last year. All of this is in the context of a record attendance of over 280,000 just three years ago. This year the figure was 218,839. That’s not so much a fall as a collapse.
Cheltenham’s Jockey Club owners knew it was coming. Before the festival they got ahead of the game by predicting crowd figures would be down. A lot of corporate jargon about ‘customer experience’ has subsequently been used to try to explain away a 22 per cent slump in three years. In any other sector that constitutes more than a trend.
Perhaps even more worrying is how those figures are accompanied by a palpable sense of decline in Cheltenham’s overall appeal. On so many levels, there is evidence of overkill. The promotion tag is how ‘Nothing feels like Cheltenham’. Now, even Cheltenham doesn’t feel like Cheltenham anymore.
In momentum terms tedium is a tough nut to crack and too much of the festival now feels way too flat. People are voting with their feet, and a lot of them are Irish. Footfall from this country has slipped significantly for an event we have been assured for years is near religious ritual here. A lot of that sort of hype is starting to sound rote.
There’s no one reason for it. It’s not only here that the cost of a week in Cheltenham just doesn’t seem worth it anymore. Punters taking off for Benidorm to go on the lash and bet their brains out in the sun might have been another social media trend to begin with, but no one can pretend it hasn’t cottoned on.
Other major sporting events continue to cost the earth but with no dip in spectator appeal. That’s important because footfall through the gates is a fundamental test of any core product. Cheltenham looks like a former A student whose standards are slipping. Remedial steps are needed to restore forward impetus.
The whole point of Cheltenham is supposed to be elite competition, the best of the best taking each other on. Spreading the quality so thinly over four days has changed that. Lossiemouth’s hollow stroll in last week’s Mares Hurdle was stark proof.
Even if Constitution Hill and State Man hadn’t fallen, the option for her not to take them on shouldn’t have been there. As it turned out all that caution achieved was to leave connections with a queasy feeling of what might have been.
Urging a return to a three-day festival inevitably comes with accusations of ‘geezer yelling at cloud’. It’s only a couple of years since the Jockey Club teased the prospect of stretching their prize asset even further to five days. Going the other way was unrealistic. It’s not anymore.
National Hunt racing is a very different beast now compared to 20 years ago. The concentration of so much resource into so few hands makes any return to some supposedly more egalitarian past even more fanciful. Competition issues in terms of one trainer or owner spreading their ammunition as widely as possible aren’t going to vanish.
But now that they’re reaping what they greedily sowed, the Jockey Club need to take the initiative. Most of all, they need to admit that when it comes to elite competition, and generating public interest in the sport’s greatest shop window, less really can be more.
Broader economics are not within racing’s power to change. Cheltenham’s structure is. Intermediate races such as the Ryanair and the Mares Chase are little more than padding. They need to be ditched as part of a move to concentrate the festival’s greatest assets back into three days.
For so long the arc of Cheltenham Festival history bent towards progress. That’s no given anymore. Momentum has shifted and that can be tough to get back. There’s no miracle drug for this bloated event. Slimming it down won’t be easy on a diet containing quite a lot of crow. But on so many levels, it won’t be wrong.
Something for Paddy’s Day
Echoing Silence (5.22) cost a lot of money after winning a point to point and only did okay on her debut over hurdles at Navan in December. She’s back on the level for Monday’s Down Royal bumper finale and can reward the long trip north from Henry De Bromhead’s Tramore yard.
Winning course and distance form is always a plus around Fontwell’s figure-of-eight-track and Officer of State (3.12) has it from November. He’s been found out since but the stable wasn’t in great form and a return to decent ground could prove a big plus.
