Saturday 19th March 2016

Vautour, Thistlecrack, Vroum Vroum Mag, Limini, On The Fringe, Douvan, Sprinter Sacre, Don Cossack, Altior, Annie Power and of course Any Currency. A truly vintage Cheltenham Festival.

Don Cossack proved he’s a class act and made up for his fall in the King George by winning the Cheltenham Gold Cup. The Gordon Elliott trained horse was always up with the pace and ran out a comfy winner from Djakadam. It was a shame Cue Card departed 3 out when bang in contention, he looked to be going just as well as the 1^st & 2^nd but his stamina hadn’t been asked a question by then.

Friday was another good day punting, 1^st & 2^nd in the Gold Cup and the only other selection highlighted, On The Fringe got the job done under a great ride from Nina Carberry. If you followed the blog selections each day, you would have won each day and that’s something not many can say at Cheltenham. Bookies are reporting the festival cost the industry upwards of 60 million pounds. Pity.

I think we’ve seen a vintage festival this year with some of the best performances and horses seen for a long time. My highlight without doubt was Vautour, he's a monster and the best National Hunt horse in training I firmly believe.