What does the festival mean to you ?

Its the greatest sporting week of the year. You start to plot from April onwards on horses potential targets, you watch all the trials through the winter and it leads to finishing work on Friday anticipating what the next 4 days will bring.

This close, with horses dropping like flies and markets wobbling, grey hair and ulcers

Lol brilliant....I took my missus last year to show her what the fuss was....won her 400 quid and was well rewarded at night lol

now im like a kid from  october to march,my wife thinks im pathetic

fcukin tickled me that did


I was in a similar position, until I took her one year, and she got it we go together every year now, but its harder to keep a straight face when one ive backed antepost comes in, ive had more than a fair share of puzzled looks from her

@Quvega has a point. This is the worst time for me -- after the glow of anticipation has faded from the antepost bets on what are now revealed to be non-runners or no-hopers, but before final plans can be made because everything still has at least three possible targets and we don't know the going (or the weights till tomorrow).

cufc - your post is so reassuring to me.

thank god i'm no the only overaged kid at christmas !!!!!!!!

Ive been sweating since November as it gets closer.Getting married this year so got the mother in law to be in my lug every day about this and that and really cant concentrate on anything else bar those magical 4 days.I have become snappy and damn well know it but if i dont get there in one piece in two weeks time the weddings off!!

i love her really but needs must first

I love NH racing more than anything (family & friends not included)and these days leading up to it are magical. I dont have many Ante Post bets this year, but it's not about that. It just has everything in sport triumph and tragedy, glory and dissappointment.

My 2nd love is theatre and I split my year into 2 major events Cheltenham and Edinburgh Fringe.

I am dreading the jumps season finishing roll on september

I absolutely love the Cheltenham festival -  all my best memories in my life are from the 4 days in March .

I remember the feeling I got when Hurricane Fly won the 2011 champion hurdle ... Wow

Memories that will last forever and a day

from january till the festival starts..its a complete an utter blur..friends become distant family become distant..all that matters is the big 4 days.
They say the average man thinks about sex every 7 seconds well in these next couple of weeks ill be thinking about the festival every 7 seconds.
lets face it the festival is better than sex

One thing to remember is don't wish these last two weeks away in a hurry, as much as we want the festival to come, it's best to start savouring it from now while the anticipation and dreams are all still alive, enjoy the previews and discussions along the way....because once it's here it'll be over in a flash.

How can a race that is part of the festival be the most depressing race of the year, but that's exactly what the Grand Annual is...because it tells you that it's all over!!!

It can all slow down from here on in for me.

I know a lot don't like the 4 days or it finishing on a Friday, but do you remember those meetings that were on the day after they were so depressing. The Midlands National which would normally be a decent Saturday card looks weak after the big days.

It’s a pretty potent force, that’s for sure.

Like most, it gives a structure to my year both in terms of the racing and the cogitating over the form, ante-post bets, ‘who will run where’ and all the great irrelevancies associated with it. But also on a deeper, visceral level with my feeling I am able to work hard and devote myself to other, far more important, issues (family, work, friends) only so much, until I get my ‘reward’ with the spiritual renewal that is Cheltenham.

I’m prepared to admit I take Cheltenham way more seriously than I should and am probably too abrasive in my views now. Still, this is my opinion so, well, suck it up, disagree, laugh and move on.

For me though, Cheltenham is way too important to cheapen with twit marketing (‘Ladies Day’ FFS), asinine countdowns (Well done! You can count backwards from 11th March to the minute – you phooking retard!), the hype that this inherently worthy and magnificent event does not need and the increasingly repetitive and rip-off Preview Evenings cottage industry that has sprung up.

I’m in a minority of one too when I say I loathe the nationalism and flag-waving. That’s not what it’s about. Racing’s never about my ’group’ besting ‘your group’, which is why that whole Kauto vs Denman thing could go fk itself and the cancer it rode into town on too. It’s about respect for everyone – no, more than ‘respect’. It’s about defining ‘us’ the National Hunt fans as passionate, friendly, Stateless, sometimes pig-headed but always inclusive to anyone who pays their dues and comes and worships at the Shrine for those four days in mid-March.

So yeah, there’s a lot of hate expressed there but as we all know, love and hate are different sides of the same coin.

So what does Cheltenham mean to me? It means me and someone I’ve never met going batsh1t crazy because we’ve backed the same horse and it’s just hit the front at the final fence.

It means me laughing like a child again at the stories I hear – and the hard-luck ones, told self-deprecatingly are by far the best.

It means plans hatched over beers and curries in Stow on the Wold, Cirencester, Tewkesbury, Montpelier etc.

It means One Man sticking it to everyone who said he couldn’t win at Cheltenham.

It means the heartache of watching a kid like Jayne Mangan have the dream of her lifetime taken away from her in the twitch of Oscar Delta’s synapses, me writing to her to say how tough it must have been for her and receiving a beautiful letter back expressing her thanks but life was tougher for JT McNamara.

It means watching Istabraq bounding clear of the Champion Hurdle field. It means Kauto, Denman and my biggest ever ante-post bet Long Run going hammer and tongs for the final half mile in the Gold Cup.

Oh you know what I’m twitting on about here…..!

Now excuse me. I’ve got my Cheltenham shirts and suit to take to the dry cleaners and the Cheltenham CD for the car journey in every day, to burn.

Yeah – that’s how deep I get into this sh1t!

Wow Roger.  You like it nearly as much as me.

Roger

Bloody good post, I feel exactly the same but couldn't have put it as eloquently as that.

I mean, lets be honest, t's quite simply the 4 best days of the year.

Christmas doesn't come close at all. If my missus walked in and said "right you I've got us a 2 week all-inclusive everything paid for trip to Sydney" I'd go..."been there love and it's Cheltenham. Out the way there's a good girl"

Told me the other day I was having an affair...with Oddschecker

ive probably been with worse looking birds tbf after 15 pints of the black stuff !

cufcno....I quite like Annie too but she's gettin dumped if not declared for the World

That's your breakfast sorted cu what will you be drinking for the rest of the day