Cheltenham, The New Testament

In the beginning, there was the Festival. Three days of fierce competition and even the weaker races had the benefit of history and tradition to justify their place. And it was a time of great plenty in which the multitudes were blessed by the glory of Desert Orchid, who took the Festival to the front pages and onto the TV News programs.

But there was a man in the temple that was unsatisfied and his name was Gillespie. First he gave us the Bumper, which was designed to appease the travellers from over the seas, who had managed only one winner the previous year. Gillespie knew that a Bumper was a great attraction for the visitors and would keep their gold flowing through the gates of Cheltenham.

The Bumper begat the Coral Cup, an abomination in the eyes of the multitude, but much loved by the moneylenders in the ring, who could now enjoy the impoverishment of the five thousand.

The Coral Cup begat the Cross Country race, three painfully slow circuits of a garden centre at the end of which a horse in green and gold would beat another horse in green and gold and the faithful wondered why horses that should be running round Fontwell were now blessed as Festival winners.

But still Gillespie was not happy and  pronounced that the resurrection required a fourth day, and so it came to pass and there was a fourth day. And even though the Lord God sent a great wind to destroy the tents of Gillespie and return the Festival to three days, the faithful were outnumbered and the Fourth Day was enshrined in law.

And the Fourth Day begat the Fred Winter, and the Jewson, and the Albert Bartlett, and even the blasphemy of a race for naked mares. And the Cathcart was changed and no longer staged as it was written in the gospels, but became the Ryanair.

But still Gillepsie was displeased and a commandment came from the temple that there should be a seventh race and the commandment begat the Martin Pipe and the Centenary and now all the people found it impossible to know which horses would perform and on which day.

And so it came to pass as foretold by the unbelievers on the Betfair forum that the new races would weaken the competition, so that the Festival was no longer the greatest test of the jumper. And Gillespie was betrayed by the disciple Donald, so that on the first day of the Festival, Gillespie was nailed to a Peddlars Cross and shown to all the crowd, before being carried to Cleeve Hill and left there to consider how he had bespoiled the Holy Trinity.

And the Holy Trinity is the three days of the Festival, Champion Hurdle day, Champion Chase day, Gold Cup day, as it was in the beginning and should be evermore.