I FIRST attended the Cheltenham Festival in 1974, the year Captain Christy won the Gold Cup. Not quite 10 years of age at the time, horse racing had already interested me for quite a while and I was well and truly hooked after watching Red Rum’s battle with Crisp in the Grand National the previous spring. Responding to my pleas to go to Cheltenham, my mother took me out of school and we went for two days, watched Terry Biddlecombe ride in his final race (to great applause from his local crowd) and heard the loud groan from the stands when High Ken brought down Pendil in the Gold Cup.

I was perched on a wooden railing close to the bar in the centre course enclosure, now called the Best Mate, while my mother, an attractive and apparently single woman, dealt with various admirers. I’m not sure if my parents were together at the time, and the Festival visit may well have fallen during what my father calls his “first period of exile.”

Due to education and then employment, my next visit wasn’t until 1986, the year of Dawn Run’s memorable victory. A few months earlier, I had very luckily landed my dream job on The Sporting Life and so watched the emotional and dramatic race from the press room balcony. When the mare “was beginning to get up” as Peter O’Sullevan called out in his BBC commentary, Cheltenham went wild and I watched hard-nosed hacks embrace. Three years later it was a similar story when Desert Orchid overcame his dislike of the course, and the testing ground, to beat Yahoo in another tremendous finish. Raleigh Gilbert was commentating on course that day and, in his beautifully modulated voice, I remember him posing the question: “Can he win at Cheltenham?” as Desert Orchid rallied magnificently up the hill. Whenever I see that race, it brings a lump to my throat.

By then, I was mixing journalism with commentating and, after sharing the Festival for three years with Graham Goode on Channel4 Racing in the late nineties, I became the main commentator in 2000 when Istabraq became a “champion of champions” by winning his third Champion Hurdle.

In 2004, the nerves were tingling like never before nor since perhaps when Best Mate made his bid for a third Gold Cup. I really loved that horse and Terry Biddlecombe’s involvement as husband of Best Mate’s trainer Henrietta Knight took me back to 1974. I visited Lockinge on several occasions with a film crew, and they gave us unbelievable access and plenty of laughs.

The image of Henrietta and Terry running towards each other, in a scene from a Hollywood movie, after the horse’s first Gold Cup win in 2002 captured how much winning at Cheltenham means to racing people and it is this, I believe, which makes the meeting more intoxicating (in more ways than one) than any other.

The Festival has provided personal punctuation marks for the years since, the amazing era of the Paul Nicholls-trained quartet Kauto Star, Denman, Big Buck’s and Master Minded, a third World Hurdle win for Inglis Drever, Moscow Flyer’s Champion Chase double, the “impossible dream” comeback of Sprinter Sacre and, quite emotionally, the 2015 Gold Cup of Coneygree, bred by my late colleague John Oaksey, and the first novice to win since Captain Christy.

Every year, there is usually a race which everyone wants to see and, as a commentator, you are not just concerned with the usual accuracy of identification on such occasions but also with trying to find the right words to match the occasion.

It is always a busy week, though a little less so now that I share racecourse commentary whereas I used to do all the races for Channel 4 (including later races for the late-night highlights programme) which, with the field sizes, could be challenging.

BETTING

Any betting is usually done in the days and weeks before the Festival. Back in 1988, I backed Celtic Shot at 33/1 to win the Champion Hurdle but, three years ago, was so taken by a horse called Qualando before the Fred Winter Handicap Hurdle that I had a rare on-the-day bet.

He paid nearly 40/1 on the Tote, and has never matched that winning performance since.

Given the fragility of jumping horses, any non-runner-no-bet clauses offered by bookmakers are well worth looking at and have become, rightfully, popular. Horses like Yanworth and Yorkhill are difficult to back, for example, this year considering the uncertainty over their Festival target. Petit Mouchoir would interest me greatly in the Arkle, but needs to recover in time from a setback.

While Samcro has been getting rave reviews, and could indeed be special, I have been impressed with Nicky Henderson’s novice On The Blind Side who looks decent value to me in the Ballymore Properties Novices’ Hurdle.

My banker at last year’s meeting was Un De Sceaux who I believe can repeat his win in the Ryanair Chase, a race which seems made for him. In the more unlikely event that the ground was very soft, then he could be switched to the Champion Chase but much would depend on Altior’s participation if I supported him for that.

I was a little underwhelmed by Might Bite’s King George win but think he can do better. In a good ground Gold Cup, he could be spectacular but, on the soft, it might be a different story.