Cheltenham Et Al: The Best of Alastair Down

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Like when Desert Orchid won the Gold Cup, I’d had my boots on the second placed horse, Yahoo at 40s - but he jumped the last with a big leap and I didn’t utter a word for Yahoo because I was yelling for Desert Orchid and that is what it does to you. He would come and win this race every year because people realised that in all honesty - and I think I can say this without Jim suing me - quite frankly, they didn’t bother running him for the rest of the year.

After the Gold Cup I had about three people ring me up and tell me they had had the best day’s betting of their lives so they didn’t know it was meant to run in the other race! He then switched to the Racing Post stable, his current employers, while becoming one of the faces of Channel Four Racing until being deemed surplus to requirements nearly two years ago when many of the ‘old guard’ appeared to be ditched in favour of more photogenic presenters.In 1945 he resumed working for Anglo-Iranian and was based in Iran until 1947, and then in London until 1954. When you’re young, you go all day and all night and then have an hour’s kip and then go again, now that I work at the meeting, it is very different but I love the way also that it has transmitted itself to the next generation - it just has this, almost evangelical ability to get the group gospel across, I mean my three children, they couldn’t name another race course, but they never miss a day at the Festival. I’ve sat and discussed over the years with my great chum Ruby Walsh, the complexity and detail of riding at Cheltenham; all of the things you need to be aware of whilst riding in the races - everyone thinks these jockeys go out there and rides just their race on their horse.

Unfortunately the disasters are always more interesting than the winners in a sense, because everyone's had winners. Well, to them of course, this week approaches for months and I know so many of the combatants well these days. Cheltenham et Al offers a generous collection of his very best columns, providing the Down angle on the great horses, jockeys and trainers; the famous races which remain indelibly in the sport’s collective memory; the controversies; the laughs – in short, the highs and the lows of racing.

Alastair Down joined The Sporting Life in 1981 and remained with that paper until its closure in 1998, at which point he joined the Racing Post. As he passed the post, I hoarsely borrowed a few quid from a mate and we went to the bar to fusillade a few corks. Gordon was at Martin Pipe’s and worships the ground he walks on, so he will find that race as important to win as a Gold Cup, so that is one of interest. I can think of potato farmers who have had a double there and have won an Arkle and a County Hurdle, who nobody had heard of before or even since - and a retired steelworker from the north-east won a handicap and he only had five horses; now that to me, is part of the romance of jump racing and that is the bit that which we seem to have slightly lost.