CHELTENHAM at 6.30am on the first day of the Festival, last year. The land of perpetual hope. Just the hills, the empty stands and a colourless sky, not yet woken up, but about to.

You can hear the Irish accents as usual, and then a few Scottish ones. Kenny Alexander isn’t usually here this early but this isn’t a usual day at Cheltenham. He is along with his friends and family to meet Rachael Blackmore, Henry de Bromhead, Peter Molony and of course Honeysuckle.

There is tension in the air, butterflies in the stomach. Even if she could, the now nine-year-old wouldn’t feel it. She is used to it by now, a dual Champion Hurdler around this place and aiming to be a dual Mares Hurdle winner. But there was so much more to this one.

“I wouldn’t say I was desperate for her to win but I really wanted it,” Alexander reflected earlier this week from his home in Perth, Scotland. “It was obvious what the public thought of her, particularly the Irish public.

“I think we all wanted her to win for loads of different reasons, and naturally everyone was thinking of Henry and his family. I guess the more you want it, naturally the doubts come in. This was a sporting fairytale but you start to think, she’ll get chinned, because sporting fairytales rarely happen, do they?”

The tension rackets up as day moves along and it’s palpable by off time but then the race begins and it’s a relieving moment. Alexander is fully sure Honeysuckle is moving better than she had early in her race at any stage earlier in the season. Like a manager kicking every ball, he nods his head slightly after every hurdle. One more down.

When she moves clear with Love Envoi turning in, the crowd’s roar goes up. At that stage it’s like a tidal wave and he can do nothing but join in.

“I just knew if she was within a length at the last, she’d win,” he says. “And she even fluffed it, like she did so many times, and even then I thought she’d still win, I was ready for it, and you just get lost in it. She and Rachael are just so hard to pass up that hill.

“She won and it was like a bomb going off. I just celebrated like a complete clown with my friends and family. I think I nearly took my wife’s head off hugging her. It was just chaos, it was like celebrating if Scotland were to win the Euros or Six Nations, neither of which will likely ever happen so that’s probably as close as I’m going to get!

“The scenes when she came back in, the reception. It was a real moment. Everybody was so happy for Henry and Heather, for Rachael and for the horse. I’ve been to Cheltenham many times and I’ve never seen anything quite close to it really. It was a perfect day, a fairytale that did actually happen.”

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Kenny Alexander says it’s a bit strange, the build up to this Cheltenham Festival this year. No Honeysuckle to look forward to for the first time in five years.

Some owners of the great horses, the most popular ones, attest that towards the end of that horse’s career, it all gets rather stressful, and the ratio of enjoyment to relief following each run tips further towards the latter but Alexander bats that notion away because for him, owning race horses is fun, and while things can get tense, it’s not real stress.

“The great thing is I’ve still got her and I see her more now than I ever did,” he reflects. “She’s in the stud and I go down to see her and she’s expecting probably in the next six weeks. That’s quite exciting, and that’s the good thing about these good mares, you can keep them and you’ve got their progeny coming through to look forward to. The story moves on.”

Honeysuckle resides in Alexander’s stud, in Ayrshire. She is the star among a squad of 20 broodmares with lots of names you will recognise; Minella Melody, Elfile, Gauloise, Brave Way, Gitane Du Berlais and Carrie Des Champs.

It has been a long process to set up, with the wheels of National Hunt breeding naturally slow to turn but it is starting to bear fruit now, and it provides Alexander with a bigger buy-in to the journey, a new aspect he enjoys immensely. It all started with the Mares Hurdle.

“When Quevega was winning, I just took the view that it was the weakest race, I don’t think it is now, but at the time the mares that were finishing third and fourth had fairly modest ratings, so I thought this is a race where you could have a chance,” Alexander explains. “So I bought my first few mares to aim for it and after that it was just a case of making the plan, that if they were any good, I’d breed from them.

“There is no guarantee you’ll breed good horses but then again there is no guarantees with buying a winning pointer or a French horse. If you breed good race mares to the best stallions I think you give yourself a chance.

“Look, it’s a long old slog. People say to me it’s great what you’re doing and I wouldn’t put anyone off doing it but you just have to be prepared that it takes a long time. I started this about 12 years ago and obviously National Hunt breeding requires so much patience.

“I remember asking Ruby Walsh what he thought of what I was doing and he said, ‘Ah, someone has to do it’ and that was when I was already all in! I enjoy it though. I get to go down to see them every day and it’s a new dimension now when you can watch them grow up.

“Even the horse that won at Leopardstown on Monday, Magic McColgan, we didn’t breed her but Peter Molony bought her as a foal and I’ve seen her grow up here. You see her win and it means more, of course it does.

“And obviously we can’t wait to see what Honeysuckle produces. I’m pretty damn sure they won’t be as good as her. Maybe one of them might be pretty good and we’ll have a bit of fun with that.”

Of his current racing stock, Alexander reckons 80% are trained in Ireland. He is one of many high profile British owners who forgo having their horses trained at home and the obvious logistical advantages of that to attain the services of the top Irish trainers.

“I think the reason I have most of mine in Ireland is basically, when I spent a bit of money initially, I didn’t have much success in the UK and when I spent some money in Ireland, I did,” he explains.

“If I’d have bought some with Henry and Willie and they’d bombed, I probably wouldn’t have a horse in training in Ireland now. When you get success, it encourages you to keep going. I think more people have gone to Ireland, because they think there’s more chance of getting success there, rightly or wrongly.

“If I thought I’d have more success having them trained in bloody Norway, I’d have them trained in Norway which might sound ridiculous but that’s the main reason.”

At the heart of it all, Alexander is just a simple racing fan. As early as 13 he went racing in Ayr and Hamilton with his father and he was lured into the sport through betting. It was in that industry he’d soar to the loftiest heights, best known for his time as chief executive of GVC Holdings, when he was instrumental in building that group into one of the giants of the gambling industry.

Racing fan

He has been going to Cheltenham for 20 years but he still regularly goes racing in Perth and various other tracks, often just as a racing fan and with none of his own horses running.

There has been much debate surrounding Cheltenham as a product in recent weeks and Alexander is a unique case study himself, as an owner who has materially benefitted from mares races at the Festival, but also as a racing fan who yearns for quality, which some feel has been diluted from the four-day meeting amid 28 races on the programme.

“If you wanted an optimum Cheltenham Festival, go back 20 years when it was three days,” he says.

“That was peak, no doubt about it. There were less races and the graded races were more competitive, but look it’s never going back to three days so it’s a waste of time calling for that.

“Should it go to five? Definitely not. I probably would take away some of the graded races to force people to take each other on. If you look at all the graded races, maybe you could make the 28 races down to 24, and remove four of the graded races to force people to make them more competitive.

“I think what they’re got to address is how expensive it is, quite frankly. It’s so expensive. If you’re an ordinary person going to Cheltenham, the cost of accommodation and getting into the track, it’s so expensive, but is it still a great event? Of course it is.”

The Scottish native isn’t working at the moment but naturally keeps a keen eye on the gambling sector and the seismic changes it’s going through, particularly in Britain where affordability checks are shaking the core of the industry.

The subject was debated at parliament last week, amid a huge push from the industry against fears of losing customers to an expanding black market and various other worries, but Alexander feels the train has left the station.

“I must admit, I don’t follow racing politics that closely but I’d fear for the industry,” Alexander says. “I’ve been following the whole affordability thing very closely. I was caught up in it when I was a CEO in the industry. I actually tried to fight it when I was there.

“I think people are only realising now how serious these implications are. Of course you’ve got to protect people from problem gambling but I don’t think this is the way to tackle it. Many people have said you can go to the off licence and supermarket and buy as many booze as you want, the government doesn’t check how much booze or junk food you’re buying.

“When I was in the industry, everything around problem gambling was taken very seriously and I’m sure it has progressed further since but these affordability checks are just draconian, and ludicrous quite frankly.

“They won’t stop problem gambling, and probably harm a sport which is the second most watched in the UK.

“This argument has been rattling on for years. Can it be stopped? I don’t know, I’d be quite pessimistic, unfortunately. Hopefully in Ireland you’ve a bit more sense than in the UK, which is normally the case.”

For the next few days, the focus is entirely on Cheltenham. Alexander may not have a Honeysuckle but he still has a quality team, headlined by Jade De Grugy, who is a leading contender for the Mares’ Novices Hurdle on Thursday.

“We’ve got a nice team, a couple of reasonable chances,” he says. “I suppose it’s about finding the next one now, which is near on mission impossible when you have Honeysuckle has the standard, but we’ll have a bit of fun and likely spend a bit of money trying.”

Alexander’s Cheltenham chances

Jade De Grugy is probably my best chance. She looks very good and from what I hear from Willie, the team are pretty confident, they like her a lot. Unfortunately it sounds like Gordon thinks he has the next Apple’s Jade in Brighterdaysahead so we’ll have to be good to beat her, but she is my best chance. Kargese is the Triumph and we probably need Sir Gino to fluff his lines, but she has got a chance. Nicky is quite sweet on Doddiethegreat, if he gets into the Coral Cup. He has done a fabulous job with getting him back so hopefully he does get a run. Doddie’ is out of the first mare I ever bought to breed, Asturienne. Miss Manzor might run in the Boodles but that race is difficult. She’d have a chance but there’ll probably be something in there with a stone in hand and I’m not sure we have a stone in hand.