IT seems apt that a week in which a bunch of inflated handicaps took centre stage, that the main racing news of the week should have been about the Cheltenham Festival, with two major announcements being made early this week.

The first, following a review of the latest controversial running of the National Hunt Chase in which only four horses finished, with two of those very tired after four miles on soft ground, was not unexpected. The National Hunt Chase, the original feature of the Cheltenham Festival, is to be reduced in distance to a trip short of four miles for the first time in its history.