DEPENDING on your view, this year’s Cheltenham Festival is likely to have been somewhere between ‘exceptional’ and ‘one of the best of all time’. There were few downsides during the four days of pulsating action and many things that will live long in the memory for all the right reasons.

It is not only on a visceral or emotional level that may be said, too. Dispassionate reflection on the hard facts is likely to result in an ‘A’, or even an ‘A+’, for Cheltenham’s end-of-week report card. Such reflection is, of course, important if the right lessons are to be carried forward from an analytical and punting point of view. Among the more important things to be considered in any debrief is the evidence of the clock, and the evidence of the clock speaks highly of many of the protagonists at this year’s Festival.