Cheltenham Parks Lido is the home of Cheltenham Swimming and Water Polo Club. Cheltenham Festival is a significant National Hunt racing meeting, and has race prize money second only to the Grand National. It is an event where many of the best British and Irish trained horses race against each other, the extent of which is relatively rare during the rest of the season. The festival takes place annually in March at Cheltenham Racecourse. The meeting is often very popular with Irish visitors, mostly because of that nation's affinity with horse racing, but also because it usually coincides with St. Patrick's
Horse racing in Great Britain possession, published in York in 1748, the result is recorded of a race run in September 1709 on Clifton and Rawcliffe Ings, near York, for a gold cup of £50. In 1740, Parliament introduced an act "to restrain and to prevent the excessive increase in horse racing"; this was largely ignored and in the 1750 the Jockey Club was formed to create and apply the Rules of Racing. However, until the 1760s, individual horses seldom ran more than five or six times, due to the scarcity of prizes on offer, but this began to change with major race meetings expanding