Graham Cunningham wraps up day one of the 2025 Cheltenham Festival

3.20: Mares’ Hurdle a Loss leader

Put it on the poll, Dave:

Is it worse to be booed in or greeted with the sort of applause more redolent of a prize giving for best vanilla sponge at the local garden fete?

Fears that late switcher LOSSIEMOUTH would be barracked if she won the Mares’ Hurdle came to nothing but if there’s ever been a more tepid welcome for a heavily backed G1 winner at the Festival then I can’t recall it.

Cheltenham took positive steps to revive the competitive nature of the Festival with changes to the Turners and the National Hunt Chase but they left the door wide open for Towswitchery by refusing to address the Mares’ Hurdle problem and Willie and Rich Ricci darted through it.

Willie insists Lossie hadn’t been working to her peak after that crunching Leopardstown fall and maybe he had a good idea she wasn’t ready for round two with the rugged State Man.

None of us will ever know what would have happened in other circumstances but this surely needs to be the last time a top-class filly ducks the Champion for a penalty kick – and the campaign to impose penalties on G1 winners in the Mares’ Hurdle starts (correction, continues) right now.

4.00: Ace is high

Faint heart never won fair lady, nor did it ever win a Champion Hurdle.

But how do you sum up four minutes that left Cheltenham in shock and Jeremy Scott and Lorcan Williams in dreamland as GOLDEN ACE showed that, just occasionally, the best form of ability is availability.

Hats off to owner Ian Gosden, who never wavered in his desire to aim high, and to the mare herself for taking full advantage when Constitution Hill and State Man crashed out.

But the 2025 Champion Hurdle will have several asterisks in the history books:

  • How close would Lossiemouth have gone had she run in the race that was meant to have her name on it for the last two years?
  • What sort of showdown would we have seen if Constitution Hill and State Man had jumped the third last and last fluently?
  • And what sort of clouds would have gathered over this year’s Festival had worse come to worst for one of the previous two champs?
Champion Hurdle: Full report and analysis

5.15pm: Absent friends

Taking the positive out of a tough situation is important if you can do it but the real world intervenes again as news from Cambridge Crown Court filters through on the bus back to the station.

I have no idea how John Hunt has managed to keep putting one foot in front of the other over the last nine months, still less how he managed to deliver that astonishing victim impact statement today.

You were much missed here today, John.

And, however long it takes, a lot of people are still praying there are brighter days ahead.

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