Cheltenham Et Al: The Best of Alastair Down

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Alastair Down on the Cheltenham Festival: ‘To go there and stand witness to extraordinary events is a rare and wonderful act of being at one with your fellow clutterers of the planet . To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. On Frankel’s last race: ‘There were tears speckling the cheers, because there is something almost inexplicably humbling about being in the presence of greatness of this magnitude. One particular piece on being snowed in and the need for essentials of life ("gaspers") made me cry with laughter when first written in the old weekender and I was delighted to see it.

This is a great read and although it is a collection of his racing post articles it makes really great reading.The cover may have some limited signs of wear but the pages are clean, intact and the spine remains undamaged. We had satellite tv, mainly French and I had no way of watching Cheltenham, except on this particular Friday.

It isn’t like that, you are in competition with every other so-and-so out there and you are looking for all the camaraderie of the weighing room (which is genuine and intense) and then they are out there to assassinate each other on course. And when the time comes I suspect my ashes will find their final resting place at the top of the hill – a place of solitude and skylarks in summer but where the denouement begins to boil to brutal in winter.

And, most poignantly of all, this is how Down described the cancer-stricken training genius Sir Henry Cecil when the incomparable Frankel won an unforgettable Juddmonte International two summers ago. I have one or two people that I talk to and some people that I listen to - including Patrick Mullins whose son is a great friend, so we will have a con flab. PPB Counterparty Services Limited, having its registered address at Level 2, Spinola Park, Mikiel Ang.