Cheltenham Diary
Fittingly, the biggest on-course bet on Gold Cup day was on the big-race winner Kicking King, a tidy £100,000 to £25,000 wager landed with a minimum of fuss. If only all Festival favourites won like that . . .
In fact, with only four winning outright favourites over the four days, desperate punters approached the 24th and last race as a getting-out-stakes affair, with a spectacular plunge on Beechcourt cutting the Irish raider from 10-1 overnight to start at 9-2 in the County Hurdle. Paul Carberry's magic failed to work, Beechcourt finished 11th and the punting week ended with a whimper rather a bang.
·At least the worldly-wise punters who snapped up the 2-1 offered by bookmakers Paddy Power that Alan Brazil would be AWOL from his Talksport morning breakfast show yesterday got a result. Due back from the Festival for a nice early 6am start, presenter Brazil was a no-show.
In fact Paddy Power saw the writing on the wall a long way from home and a spokesman admitted: "We suspended betting on Wednesday when our intelligence revealed that the magic of Cheltenham was proving an intoxicating lure for Alan".
·It's not just winners and titles that Martin Pipe collects - it's horse boxes too. The champion trainer earned a brand new horse box yesterday for winning Cheltenham's Frequent Runner Championship. No doubt Pipe will be scouring today's classified ads looking for a suitable numberplate. His two horseboxes at Cheltenham this week were personalised with P1 MCP and A1 MCP plates.
·It wasn't just presenting the totesport Gold Cup prizes that had the sponsor's chairman Peter Jones beaming yesterday. Jones was telling all and sundry that the big race was beamed live into 20 New York betting shops for the first time as totesport build on their international programme.
"We've taken good money on the race - much better than expected to an audience not familiar with jumps racing," Jones said. And, full of admiration for such game punters, he added "The race was shown at 10.15am local time in New York!"
·For the fourth successive day no punter managed to get all six winners in the Tote Jackpot bet. A bumper pool rolls over to Uttoxeter today.