Last week was the Cheltenham National Hunt Festival; I had a ticket for the Friday – Gold Cup day. One of the nice things about going racing is that you can (with a bit of elbow-barging) get right up close to some of the most important people and horses in the sport. Below some of the parade ring personalities at the prize-giving for the 14.40 Albert Bartlett Novices Hurdle, won by Brindisi Breeze at 7/1. Albert Bartlett’s daughter (I assume) handed out the trophy. She didn’t look anything like a potato:
You often see this man – one of the racecourse stewards – at meetings, doing odd jobs in the parade ring:
My uncle wisely picked us the 14.05 – Alderwood at 25-1 with A.P. McCoy on board (he went on to win the Gold Cup later in the day on Synchronised) so we had a profitable day despite not picking a single other winner. That put us in a minority – the bookies were well up over the four days with hardly any of the favourite horses – even at odds-on – coming home. Perhaps that was why the queues for the bars were longer than those for the bookmakers. There were 69,000 people crammed into the racecourse on the Friday and at least a third of them seemed to be there solely to get smashed. I saw one drunk taking a piss in the middle of the club enclosure as his mates egged him on, laughing:
Still, he probably won’t live to see 40. There are seven races on Gold Cup day but there’s one they don’t include on the cards – the piss-heads’ race down the hill into the town centre to tear it up on Friday night. It might be contested by the following entries:
My money’s on Seamus le Pissed (geddit?), but don’t rule out Crapulous Colin – he hasn’t been sober since 1973:
a small drawing blog 