Cheltenham – Finishing post is almost in sight!
Gold Cup day is upon us and that means all this weeks fun and games at Cheltenham are almost over.
Yesterday continued the trend of a decline in turnover that we have seen this year. Yesterday was 12% lower than previous years. We also got to add back in the XC chase to the mix and rebasing that back to Tuesday indicated that day declined 7%.
I’m not expecting to break any records this year, to do that needs everything to fall into place perfectly and that hasn’t happened this year. I also have this problem that some of my previous bests are off the scale. But I’d still imagine some of the stuff I’ve managed to achieve this week would still be a surprise to many. I’m pleased to report that opportunities still abound for the well practiced.
Lest we forgot our minor role in the scheme of things. My thoughts go out to JT McNamara and his family. The Irish rider, 37, has been placed in an induced coma and is being assessed for a severe spinal injury after a nasty fall yesterday. I am sure we would all like to wish him the best. I have a massive amount of respect for jump jockey’s. There are few sports where you can sustain a fatal or life changing injury, so I suggest at some point you head over to https://www.injuredjockeys.co.uk/ to show your appreciation for the risks the jockey’s take in providing us the entertainment and opportunity we enjoy.
Yesterday proved a bit more challenging than expected and while fill rate improved, it was only because there was a lot more movement in the market. Overall, the metrics from this year are more or less converging on last year.
I seem to be settling into a pattern this week. A slow start and slowly pick up speed towards to the feature race then pop in a surprise at the end. The surprise yesterday came from the XC Chase. Already postponed then delayed I actually had more time to trade this and it resulted in a reasonable result in the end which seemed unlikely at post time. Not the best result of the day, but the most satisfying!
Of course today is all about the Gold Cup and I don’t have fond memories of last year when there was area wide broadband problem just at the critical moment. Such was the spectacular timing of the outage that it meant I didn’t really have time to do much about it and I failed to trade the big race with any confidence. Outages are rare, but during the most important race of the week, even rarer. I am not looking for a repeat today!
Lots of really good stuff to get stuck into today, so best of luck with whatever you are doing.
Category: Horse Racing
