Cheltenham Festival diary

Golden Miller gets a daily scrub up, Lightning strikes Cheltenham PR man and Where The Fox Hat makes an unwelcome return
Golden Miller
Golden Miller, the record-breaking 1930s Gold Cup winner, has his statue given tender care and attention even to this day. Photograph: Popperfoto

Golden Miller statue still getting the star treatment

After straining every sinew in a bid to be first up the steep hill, it's customary for panting, sweat-lathered Festival competitors to be unsaddled, then led away for a well-earned post-race sluice-down. Astonishingly, much the same courtesy is still enjoyed by Golden Miller, who won the Gold Cup every year between 1932 and 1936. When the Diary arrived on Wednesday morning the statue of the long-dead superstar which overlooks the racecourse was being soaped up and scrubbed down by a steward.

Lightning strikes Clifton

Spare a thought for Andy Clifton, the Festival communications director, who stood between BBC Radio racing reporter Cornelius Lysaght and a horse as it was about to lash out on Wednesday, only for the spooked runner to flatten him with a kick to the stomach. An understandably distressed and winded Clifton was quickly rushed to hospital for x-rays, which revealed he had suffered nothing more serious than colourful horseshoe-shaped bruising. And the name of the nag? Lightning Strikes. In this case, mercifully, it was only once and not too hard.

Where The Fox Hat?

Among the jumble of retail outlets in the tented village is one boasting a name so pun-tastic and bizarre, one could be forgiven for assuming its owners decided to set up shop so they could erect a sign rich in wordplay over the door to show how clever they are. Where The Fox Hat, which shares its name with a horse long since retired, sells fox fur millinery, among other accessories, to passing trade. With those behind it claiming to "capture the essence of the individual", we are left to conclude that somebody else captures the poor foxes.


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