Thursday, March 10, 2005

BEST MATE TO MISS totesport CHELTENHAM GOLD CUP - STATEMENT FROM HENRIETTA KNIGHT

The 10-year-old chaser dropped back during his work on Mick Channon's gallops at West Ilsley and trainer Henrietta Knight immediately knew that something was wrong.

She said: "He was pulled up and we found blood coming from both his nostrils. He has obviously not shaken off the virus that affected him in January.

"Best Mate has never broken blood vessels in his life before and the vet said he needs to be put out in a field for a long rest - he will come back next season.

"It's absolutely shattering but it is better that it happened on the gallops rather than at Cheltenham."

FIVE DAYS TO GO TO THE 2005 CHLTENHAM FESTIVAL

This final Media Information Pack includes all the latest news on The 2005 Festival with facts and figures about the many side attractions that complement the racing from Tuesday to Friday, March 15 to 18.

A few tickets are still available for the Best Mate Enclosure on Thursday but it is now sold out on the remaining three days.

There will be around 5,000 tickets on sale for the Club and Tattersalls Enclosures at a Box Office outside the main entrance on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Club badges cost £60 per day while Tattersalls admission is £30.

Edward Gillespie, Managing Director at Cheltenham Racecourse, said: "This year a new chapter is added to The Festival's long and illustrious history when we race for a fourth day next week.

"The stage is set for 24 great races and we look forward to welcoming both our regular visitors and those making their first trip to The Festival. Our first objective for the four-day format is to make the racing even more attractive than it has been in the past and, with excellent entries across the card and the course in terrific condition, we are well on the way to achieving this."

GROUND

The going on Wednesday afternoon was GOOD-TO-SOFT, GOOD IN PLACES, on the Chase and Hurdle courses and GOOD-TO-SOFT, SOFT IN PLACES on the Cross-Country Course.

Simon Claisse, Clerk of the Course at Cheltenham, said: "We are forecast a little light rain on Friday then a cold weekend, warmer weather on Tuesday followed by rain that evening."

The racing surface has been expanded for the four-day Festival and Claisse added: "The New Course has a fresh strip of ground available for Thursday and then another for totesport Cheltenham Gold Cup day on Friday.

"In total we have around five acres extra racing surface this year between the Old and New Courses, enabling us to have two separate hurdle courses from the two-mile start as well as fresh ground for both Thursday and Friday on the New chase course."

The Festival 2005 - Facts And Figures

Attendance Figures
The Festival has been an all-ticket event since 2000 but this year's expansion to four days means there will be Club and Tattersalls tickets or badges to purchase on the day on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Around 235,000 spectators are anticipated over the four days.

Well over 350,000 spectators visit Cheltenham for the 16 days' racing through the season. Away from The Festival, highlights include The Open in November, featuring the Paddy Power Gold Cup, which attracts 70,000 visitors over a three-day weekend.

Race Values & Sponsorship
Over £4.6 million in prize money is offered over Cheltenham's 16 race days. Total prize money at The Festival has risen for the 17th consecutive year to £2,710,000 in 2005, headed by the totesport Cheltenham Gold Cup worth £350,000 this year.

Sponsors contribute over 40% of annual prize money at Cheltenham, and The Festival accounts for over 50% of all prize money on offer during the season.

There are 17 individual race sponsors at The Festival as well as Guinness, sponsor of the Guinness Village. New sponsors welcomed to The 2005 Festival are Ladbrokes, The Daily Telegraph, Brit Insurance, Jewson Builders' Merchants, and Sporting Index.

The Fourth Day
This year's first-ever four-day Festival is the culmination of over three years' planning. Expansion of the racing surface by over five acres, new buildings in the Best Mate Enclosure and The Centaur opened in 2004, and the recruitment of key new Festival sponsors have concluded the first stage of The Festival's extension.

In 1995, Cheltenham staged four days on the trot, albeit that the fourth day - when over 17,500 attended - was not part of The Festival.

Cheltenham Festival Betting Guide
The Cheltenham Festival Betting Guide, published by Weatherbys - sponsor of the Weatherbys Champion Bumper at The Festival - provides a wealth of statistical information to help you beat the bookies. Copies may be ordered online at www.cheltenham.co.uk

Get the Best Odds
You can get all the best odds through www.raceodds.com - an odds comparison site run in partnership with Easyodds.

Greyhound Races
For the third year, the Cheltenham Festival Greyhound Stakes over 240 yards will be run up the finishing straight after racing on Tuesday. Dual winner Shades Of Johnny bids to retain his crown and will need to be at the top of his form to resist the challenge of two Irish-trained contenders. This offers £1,000 to the winner and, for the first time, there will be a Consolation Final with a first prize of £500.

Betting
An estimated £40 million was bet on-course during The 2004 Festival, an average of £2 million for each of the 20 races. No returns are available from individual bookmakers operating at The Festival, although the tote last year had a record turnover of over £10 million. This makes a cumulative total of £50 million bet on-course alone.

The Festival is the tote's highest turnover meeting (including Royal Ascot) with totesport Cheltenham Gold Cup Day their highest turnover day in the entire racing calendar. The 2004 Festival accounted for 9% of the tote's annual racecourse turnover and during the three days over 900,000 transactions were taken by 650 operators at Cheltenham. The Smurfit Champion Hurdle, Queen Mother Champion Chase and totesport Cheltenham Gold Cup are ranked in the top 10 betting races for 2004.

There are 226 bookmakers' pitches at The Festival and the record number of transactions for a single bookmaker for one race was 700 by fearless Scottish bookie Freddie Williams, around 10 years ago. This equates to one transaction every two seconds!

Off-course, the industry estimate for betting turnover through The Festival is £300 million. An ordinary day would see a cash take of circa £60 million. The Festival is second only to the Grand National among the big betting events.

Most betting shops will open earlier than usual, and bookmakers will take on extra staff for their telephone betting operations and shops. The Festival provides the focus for the biggest marketing spend on betting throughout the year.

Horses & Riders
The 20 races attracted 332 runners at The 2004 Festival. They were accompanied by around 80 different jockeys, 500 handlers, horsebox drivers and ancillary staff, physios, vets, doctors, and occasional security guards, not to mention the odd goat or donkey as a lucky mascot or stable companion!

Cheltenham's 300 stables burst at the seams, particularly since many foreign runners stay several days. Horses and riders are often based with nearby trainers and livery yards. Hunter's Lodge, the stable staff accommodation, looks after 450 staff who stay over with the horses, or who stay only for the day.

Cash is King!
You know where your money went last year, but do you know where it came from? In 2004, nearly £900,000 was dispensed by the 14 cashpoint machines around the racecourse and this is likely to rise to well in excess of £1 million this year. Small wonder the tote and bookmaker turnover keeps escalating.

Hotels in Cheltenham
It is estimated over 5,000 hotel beds are filled around the county. These range from four-star hotels to small B & Bs. Like Wimbledon, many residents decamp for the week, and hire out their houses, but unlike Wimbledon, these are not to the sportsmen. The jockeys tend to stop over with friends or head home, Cheltenham being within an hour of the big training centres in Lambourn and within easy reach of the South-West.

This year, racegoers have been able to book accommodation direct from the racecourse through a new online reservation service, which provides information on availability throughout the county (and beyond), price and transport links. Visitors from Ireland can now construct their entire holiday through Cheltenham's website by booking flights, accommodation and tickets through www.cheltenham.co.uk

Channel 4
The Festival is Channel 4's largest outside broadcast, using 35 cameras and 120 staff to bring the action into living rooms through the UK and Ireland. Over 250 miles of cables and cutting edge technology like the Blimp and start camera jib make the programme one of the highlights of the year.

The steadicam is Channel 4's favourite camera. Handled by Channel 4's Adrian Camm, the 80lb camera is harnessed around his waist and provides ground shots and pictures closer than any fixed position. Adrian walks around five miles a day with the camera, and loses 12lb in bodyweight through the week.

The Festival in Gloucestershire
The impact of The Festival is felt well beyond the racecourse gates. A huge number of businesses, large and small, benefit from the influx of spectators into the county. In fact, according to Cheltenham Borough Council's Director of Tourism. Ken Jennings: "The only Cheltenham business not obviously benefiting from the Festival is the undertaking profession".

The economic value of the Festival was drawn sharply into focus back in 2001, the year foot and mouth forced the cancellation of the meeting. An economic impact study concluded that circa £44 million is spent in the county during the week, of which 50% is spent within Cheltenham town, the remainder within Gloucestershire.

To herald the new four-day era, 16 Cheltenham traders are taking part in the first totesport Cheltenham Gold Cup Town Centre Sweepstake. These include Marks and Spencer, WH Smith, Cavendish House, both Regent and Beechwood Arcades, Woolworths, Dagenhams, The Famous, Next, Everyman Theatre, Starline Taxis and Star FM. The draw for runners takes place in the Promenade at 8am on Friday and each competitor will have posters and stickers provided by the Racecourse. The winner will receive a replica Gold Cup, store vouchers and tickets for the Hunter Chase Evening in April to include Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames in concert. Funds raised from entry fees will be matched by the Racecourse and be contributed to the Mayor's Tsunami Recovery Appeal.

Taxi drivers are among the big winners of the week. An average Cheltenham cabbie will earn in four days as much as he would in a fortnight's ordinary trade!

Parade of Champions
There will be a parade of past totesport Cheltenham Gold Cup winners on Friday, March 18, featuring:

Desert Orchid 1989
Garrison Savannah 1991
Jodami 1993
Cool Dawn 1998

The Parade will take place in the Paddock at approximately 12.45pm with commentary from Ian Carnaby and Jonathan Powell. The horses will also parade in front of the Grandstand before the totesport Cheltenham Gold Cup.

Festival Microsite
This year, Cheltenham has teamed up with sportinglife.com to bring you the official microsite for The Festival at www.cheltenham2005.com. Audio and video clips, interviews with leading racing personalities, profiles and tips make up this compelling microsite, as well as competitions.

Guinness Festival Awards
The popular Guinness Festival Awards move into their 10th year in 2005 with a new twist, enabling members of the public to become involved in voting for their favourite moment. The Paddock interviews on Tuesday will begin when last year's overall award winner Henrietta Knight, as voted by callers to Channel 4's Morning Line, is presented with her prize. There are daily awards for the moment caught on camera which most captures the essence of the Festival. The shortlist of three candidates each day will be narrowed down by a panel of racing journalists, and the public, on and off the course, will be invited to text their selection to adjudge the final daily winner. Texts received will be entered in a random daily draw to win a trip to the Punchestown Festival in April. You'll be able to text in your selection by texting Festival, your choice A, B or C and your name to 63663.

SMS Results
If there's one thing that's infuriating about being on the racecourse, or indeed away from it but incommunicado, it's not being able to know the important results. From 2005, that problem is solved, with a new SMS Results service, brought to you by Cheltenham. Whether you are enjoying yourself in a crowded bar away from a TV or loudspeaker, or well away from the course, this service will give you the full SP on all The Festival results. The 24-key results can be texted direct to your phone for just £4, or the entire season on an ongoing basis for £15. Once again, www.cheltenham.co.uk is the site to visit.

Festival Radio, Television, Notice Board & Internet
Cheltenham is one of a number of major sports events to boast its own radio station. Festival Radio broadcasts within a five-mile radius of the Racecourse from 10am to 7pm and features news, previews, features, race reports and commentaries, traffic updates, replays, reviews and form on frequency 87.7FM. Festival radio is also available on www.cheltenham.co.uk including commentaries of all 24 races. Spectators on the course get to listen too through the unique Sound Dec earpiece, available on the course for £7.

In addition Festival TV transmits from 11am on the Racecourse's CCTV leading into Channel 4's coverage which commences at 1.30pm each day and reaches an audience of 1.8 million, over 26% of the daytime audience. This year, the Festival coverage will be beamed into more overseas countries than ever before.

In 2004 Cheltenham received 16 hours of terrestrial television coverage from Channel 4 excluding other transmissions from a further 25 television and documentary crews and representatives from over 160 British and Irish-based radio stations. Approximately 180 photographers and over 500 members of the press are accredited to provide coverage of The Festival.

Racenews issue press releases and press packs prior to and throughout The Festival and these will be displayed at key points around the Racecourse and also on Cheltenham's website www.cheltenham.co.uk

Catering
Letheby & Christopher, the Racecourse caterer and also sponsor of the opening Letheby & Christopher Supreme Novices' Hurdle, will serve 10,000 bottles of champagne, 25,000 bottles of wine, 200,000 pints of draught beer or lager and over 150,000 pints of Guinness, Ireland's national drink, a further 30,000 bottles of beer, 70,000 bottles of minerals, 8,000 gallons of tea and coffee, 20,000 portions of chips, 25,000 beef burgers and hot dogs, 50,000 sandwiches and a further 12,000 packed lunches for staff. The Tented Village alone will house between 6,000 - 8,000 guests each day and 100 private boxes in the Grandstand will cater for a further 2,000 guests. In addition 15 miles of construction materials will be erected for the four days.

Travel
The majority of racegoers travel to Cheltenham by car and the racecourse has the capacity to park 14,000 cars and 350 coaches per day. Typically 30,000 cars, 1,000 mini coaches and 1,000 coaches arrive and depart during the meeting along with 220 helicopter movements. Typically 8,000 people will travel by train each March to Cheltenham. There are three specially chartered trains from mainline London stations, and a steam train - the Paddy Power Flyer - which brings racegoers in the final eight miles from Toddington Station, north of Winchcombe. Both First Great Western and Virgin Trains put on additional trains to accommodate the racegoing traffic.

An increasingly popular means of travel is the stretch limousine. 2004 saw numbers reach 35 per day, and special parking has to be allocated to prevent them grounding! Another unique and extraordinary mode of transport for 2004 was the rickshaw.

The Irish Influence
The Irish influence at Cheltenham continues to grow each season at not only The Festival but also The Open Meeting in November. The last Irish-trained winner of the totesport Cheltenham Gold Cup, Imperial Call, was in 1996 while in 1997 the seven Irish-trained successes equalled the previous best total set in 1977.

In 2004 there were four Irish-trained winners at The Festival including Brave Inca in the opening Letheby & Christopher Supreme Novices' Hurdle and Hardy Eustace in the Smurfit Champion Hurdle. The Weatherbys Champion Bumper on Wednesday is normally Irish territory, and 2004 proved no exception, when little known trainer Tom Cooper brought home the bacon with Total Enjoyment.

More than 7,000 racegoers travel over from Ireland for The Festival and it is estimated that up to 20% of the entire crowd are Irish, including those based in Britain. Once again this year, St Patrick's Day falls during The Festival, on the Thursday.

Ireland has long been associated with some of the most successful riders with seven of Britain's top 10 jockeys this season hailing from across the Irish Sea - Tony McCoy, Timmy Murphy, Tony Dobbin, Graham Lee, Ruby Walsh, Mick Fitzgerald and Noel Fehily.

Cheltenham's Top Riders
Richard Dunwoody is the only jockey to have ridden over 100 winners at Cheltenham - 109 in total, with 18 coming at The Festival. Other prolific riders include Peter Scudamore (94 - 13 at The Festival), John Francome (71), Fred Winter (67) and Terry Biddlecombe (60). Tony McCoy unsurprisingly heads the list of current jockeys riding in terms of Festival winners, even though the last two Festivals have not been kind to him. With 15 victories, McCoy leads his nearest rivals Mick Fitzgerald and Richard Johnson by three. Barry Geraghty and Carl Llewellyn follow up on seven apiece, with last year's Daily Telegraph Leading Rider Award winner Ruby Walsh on six. The Daily Telegraph Leading Rider Award provides a perpetual trophy for the leading jockey, together with a week's holiday at the luxury resort of Hyatt La Manga in Spain.

Cheltenham's Top Festival Trainers
The late Fulke Walwyn is still by far the most successful Festival trainer with 40 winners gained over a 40 year period. His nearest rival is record-breaking trainer Martin Pipe who as saddled 32 winners since 1981 with Nicky Henderson following closely behind with 25 winners since 1985. This year for the first time, The Daily Telegraph will reward the Leading Trainer with more silverware and a similar holiday. Paul Nicholls won this in 2004, beating Jonjo O'Neill in the final contest of the meeting.

Trade Stands & Entertainment
A day at The Festival is not just about the 24 hotly-contested races. There are a wide variety of other attractions including 70 trade stands selling everything from bags, binoculars and bronzes to wine and wicker baskets, suits and silver jewellery. You can also buy a special limited edition Best Mate rocking horse from Stevensons, the well-known rocking horse craftsmen.

The Cheltenham Collection also offers the Best Mate range, an exclusive range of Best Mate branded merchandise from which 10% will benefit owner Jim Lewis's favourite charity - the Gentleman's Night Out, which caters for disadvantaged children in the Birmingham area.

The Arkle Bookshop
Never has there been such a strong field for the position of top racing author, and all the big names will be at Cheltenham promoting their latest publications.

Jenny Pitman's The Vendetta, Published by Pan McMillan
Sir Peter O'Sullevan's Horseracing Heroes, published by Harper Collins
Best Mate, published by Highdown
Lester's Derbys published by Methuen, written by Sean Magee
Bill Barich's A Fine Place To Daydream, published by Harper Collins

All will be signing copies during Festival week at the Arkle Bookshop by the Arkle statue.

Music
Between the moment the gates open at 10.30am and the departure of the last racegoer in the evening, there is no shortage of entertainment to keep even the occasional racegoer happy. From shamrock sellers for St Patrick's Day (March 17th) to the popular Murphy's Marbles, the band which plays the Guinness Village, there is a panoply of quintessentially Irish entertainment during the Meeting.

This year, Murphy's Marbles bring out their second Cheltenham album, entitled They'll Run Forever. The first album, released in time for last year's Festival, sold 2,000 copies. Nowadays, a CD only needs to sell 10,000 to make a Number 1 in the charts, so there's work to be done! The nine-track album is available to purchase at Cheltenham or via www.cheltenham.co.uk

After racing, racegoers will be able to while away the hours unwinding from the excitement of the Festival with a live band in the Centaur. Live! will play each night for an hour underneath the big screen with a selection of favourite rock and pop tracks.

Other highlights include the Brasshoppers Band in the Centaur before racing, George Buchanan in the Winged Ox Bar, the Harmonious Blacksmiths in the Tented Village, the Roy Kirby Jazz Band in Champions Drive and the Eureka Parade Jazz Band, who will be touring all enclosures

And then
When it's all over, there's Ireland vs Wales to look forward to in Cardiff on Saturday, and only 361 days until the start of Festival 2006 (March 14-17th 2006).

The totesport Cheltenham Gold Cup is the feature race on the final day of the new four-day Cheltenham Festival.

For old articles (from 1st March 2000) go to the Newslink Archive

©Racenews 2005
designed and produced by Racenews Internet Services