FAIRYTALES don’t happen as often as we’d like and if they did they wouldn’t be fairytales but Cheltenham played host to two and very nearly three of them yesterday.

A memorable week reached a magical crescendo with the Gold Cup success of Coneygree whose triumph provided a landmark successful for the husband and wife team of Mark and Sara Bradstock.

This season they have sent out just nine individual runners over jumps yet they still took the most incredible step of pitching their three-race novice into the white cauldron that is the Gold Cup. The result was one that will resonate for years as the bold jumping eight-year-old claimed a most famous victory.

Truly this was a fairytale victory, particularly when one considers that Coneygree is the produce of a mare who cost just £3,000 and has now produced a Gold Cup hero to go with the 2011 Hennessy scorer Carruthers.

MULLINS’ CHARGE

Once again Willie Mullins led the Irish charge on the last day with a double. He may have been denied a first Gold Cup but he ends the week with eight winners, a feat never before managed in Festival history.

In the amphitheatre that is this meeting, winners are hard to come by but Mullins made it is his own this week as his strongest ever raid delivered in style. Wicklow Brave got him off the mark yesterday when demolishing the County Hurdle field and never more apt was the old cliché of a horse looking as though it had just joined in on the turn for home. Wicklow Brave’s troubles at the start, the most recent of which was only last Saturday, were banished to the past as he completed an outstanding three-winner Festival for Paul Townend.

POWERFUL DEMPSEY

The distinction of clinching the record for Mullins falls to Killultagh Vic who edged a bobbing finish to the Martin Pipe Conditional Riders Handicap Hurdle. That one’s jockey Luke Dempsey, who was riding at this meeting for the first time this week, has been on quite a roll lately and showed just why as he held the late thrust of Noble Endeavor.

MCCOY’S RECEPTION

By this stage it was almost too much to hope for that Tony McCoy would say farewell to the festival with a winner in the Grand Annual – a race named in his honour this year. For a long period his mount Ned Buntline shaped like a winner but he eventually had to settle for fourth.

Even so the reception that McCoy got on the walkway in front of the stands both before and after the race was something to behold and it provided a memorable conclusion to this great fixture.

On The Fringe, who has been such a stalwart of the hunter chasing scene, finally got his day in the sun as he sauntered to victory in the Foxhunter, some four years after he notched up the first of his two placed efforts in the race.

This was also a day that will live long in the memory for Mag Mullins who struck with Barry Connell’s Martello Tower in the Albert Bartlett. Her first runner here came in 2006 and he was placed, so it was perhaps quite significant that she waited nine years to come back with her second representative here.

In all this is a meeting that never fails to meet expectations and this year was no different, while it also offered the promise of many more memorable days to come.

Bryan Cooper picked up a total of 15 days of whip supensions yesterday. He first received four days for his efforts on No More Heroes in the Albert Bartlett and then got 11 as well as a £1,250 fine after partnering Road To Riches into third in the Gold Cup.

Bryan Cooper’s suspension means that he will miss the Grand National at Aintree and Irish Grand National at Fairyhouse.

The days are as follows: March 28th, 29th, 30th and 31st, April 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 9th,10th,11th, 12th,13th and 14th.