Cheltenham is Here!

The countdown is over and we have reached Day 1 of the Cheltenham Festival!  We all went to the local pub last night, the Culm Valley.  There were about 12 of us as we have some Irish friends staying at Pond House and it is been the same routine for the past 20 years!  As you can guess, we were all picking out our winners for the Festival.  It is easy to be bad mind you after 12 bottle of Becks!  Not long to go now and the first race will be off.  The roar that goes up as they jump off for the first race at 1.30pm is like that at no other sporting event.  There will be lots of Irish over, many wearing big black and green guiness hats.  David has a marquee for the week and the guiness tent is right by us so it tends to get very noisy!  We have about 100 people in our Wigwam as owner Roger Stanley likes to call it everyday!  Tom Scu and some of the other jockeys come in at midday and give a talk and pick their winners fourth day, well we know the horses that are not going to win anyway!

Our runners for today are setting off at 7.30am so they will be at the course nice and early and beat all the traffic.  I captured them in the lorry just as they were leaving, as you can see they all look nice and relaxed.  Good luck boys!

              Swing Bill                                      Dan Breen

It is great news to hear that Tom Scudamore will now partner Midnight Chase in the Gold Cup on Friday but I feel desperately sorry for Dougie Costello who broke his leg in a fall yesterday.  He must be absolutely gutted as he will have been looking forward to this ride for months and he also had some other nice chances to.  He will now have to sit and watch it all on the TV but lets just hope that Midnight Chase runs a fine race for friend and neighbour Neil Mulholland.

David'd partner Leanne is taking young Jack Pipe to Cheltenham today.  We like to start them off young, although this is already is second Cheltenham Festival and he has only just truned 1!  It is also Leanne's birthday today, she will be pleased that I have told everyone I am sure but lets just hope we can have a birthday winner for her as that will be the best present ever!