I mean, it ran, but it ran about as quick as I could – I nearly became a Republican that day I was so cross! To be honest, we are talking five or six days ahead of the meeting, and I have learnt down the years that you get a flood of information from lots of people and you have to learn with people to separate the dreamers from the realists.

The cover may have some limited signs of wear but the pages are clean, intact and the spine remains undamaged. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. On a quiet day, a few souls who share my blood, and some of those friends who truly understood why that blood was ever quickened in that place in the month when the hares go mad, will perform a simple ceremony. In the old days you could muck about with them and get there because of the weight range of handicap was two stone and now that’s 4 or 5lbs, so it’s got to be the one that wins with a little bit ‘up its sleeve’ but they’ve all got ones, twos, threes and fours, whereas in the old days you could have six and you wouldn’t be put off if you thought that the man who trained them had the ‘brass neck’ to do it.

For many years he was senior presenter on Channel 4 Racing during the jumps season, and he has been named Racing Journalist of the Year three times. Unfortunately the disasters are always more interesting than the winners in a sense, because everyone's had winners. Colonel Sir Alastair Frederick Down OBE MC TD (23 July 1914 – 22 October 2004) was a Scottish army officer, accountant, and oilman. In 1945 he resumed working for Anglo-Iranian and was based in Iran until 1947, and then in London until 1954. Gordon was at Martin Pipe’s and worships the ground he walks on, so he will find that race as important to win as a Gold Cup, so that is one of interest.

We are a passionate community of over 55,000 horse racing fans, commentators and industry professionals.I think I had an account with Billy's back then and I've never had a better day's punting at Cheltenham, culminating with a good bet on Jim Old's Sir Talbot in the County Hurdle. Wherever this broadcast was coming from, I don't know, but I watched the whole meeting daring not to touch the remote control! Following an unsuccessful stint running a betting syndicate after graduating, Down became a form analyst before being invited to apply for a job on The Sporting Life in 1981. No missing or damaged pages, no creases or tears, no underlining or highlighting of text, and no writing in the margins. The smoke drifted across all these tweedy folk in the box next to us and I think they were all out of their heads by the end of the day!

In Double Trigger they meet in a chemistry that the old alchemists sought unavailingly for generations,” wrote Down. I first went to the Festival actually when I was 19 and a friend of dads had a wonderful box which he couldn’t use.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 can think of potato farmers who have had a double there and have won an Arkle and a County Hurdle, who nobody had heard of before or even since - and a retired steelworker from the north-east won a handicap and he only had five horses; now that to me, is part of the romance of jump racing and that is the bit that which we seem to have slightly lost. Cheltenham et Al offers a generous collection of his very best columns, providing the Down angle on the great horses, jockeys and trainers; the famous races which remain indelibly in the sport’s collective memory; the controversies; the laughs – in short, the highs and the lows of racing.