Roll On 2009!

The Festival is over for another year, but what a magnificent four (three!) days we had.

Everyone will have their own individual highlights, but for us there was a period of just over an hour on Thursday afternoon when we were reminded of exactly why we make the pilgrimage to Cheltenham every year.

First up was the awesome performance of Master Minded in the Queen Mother. His was a quite exceptional display of speed and fluent jumping and, as there is no reason to think that Voy Por Ustedes was below his best, it was as good a Festival performance as there has been for many, many years. It was simply breathtaking.

If that wasn’t enough, two races later we saw the hugely popular Inglis Drever complete a unique hat-trick of wins in the World Hurdle. There was nothing flashy about his effort as it was grit, determination and a fierce will to win that saw Howard Johnson’s horse scythe through the field on the punishing Cheltenham hill to get his head in front where it mattered and secure his place in the history books. The immense joy on the face of his stable lass was shared by all of us lucky enough to be at Prestbury Park on a magical afternoon of national hunt racing.

We hope you enjoyed the action as much as us and thank you for reading our Blog over the past few weeks. We’ll be back again at the end of the year to start building up to the 2009 Festival. It can’t come around quick enough!

For those of you who can’t wait, log on to our sister site, www.grandnational.org.uk for all of the build up to this year’s National.