Gold finale is a must for Cheltenham

It's vital that racing's marketing men, in searching for a new audience, don't cheese off the old one or desecrate what is cherished within our sport Which brings me to proposals to shunt the Cheltenham Festival into the weekend.

From 2012, the four-day meeting is set to start on Wednesday and finish on Saturday.

The Gold Cup will, as now, be run on the Friday of the fixture, with the Champion Hurdle on Wednesday, the Queen Mother Champion Chase on Thursday and the World Hurdle moved from Thursday to Saturday.

The bulk of what I've read this week seems to put this proposed move firmly in the 'win-win' category, but it's not that simple.

Parallels have been drawn with Ascot's fifth day, in which Ascot Heath was turned into the final day of the Royal meeting - but they are bogus.

For a start, Ascot already raced on a Saturday, and the Heath fixture was dying to be souped up - the feature, the Listed Churchill Stakes, was a joke.

And Royal Ascot doesn't have a shape - you can kid yourself that the Gold Cup, on Thursday, is the highlight, but at the expense of the other Group 1 events run during the week? Get away with you.

Ascot doesn't build through a crescendo to a climax - it has five days that are roughly the equal of each other, and then it ends.

The Cheltenham Festival, three days or four, isn't like that. It has to increase towards a finale, and that finale requires the Gold Cup as its centrepiece.

And the differences don't end there.

Much of Cheltenham's crowd camps in the town for the whole week. There's a team feeling among them that, win lose or draw, they're there for the long haul.

Ascot's customer base is made up largely of daytrippers, who get on the train at Waterloo in the morning then return there, often unable to stand, 10 hours later. As a rule, they are not as bothered, or as knowledgeable about the racing as the Cheltenham throng - they just want to get hammered.

In trying to push the old Thursday crowd of 60,000 to 65,000 on Saturday, Cheltenham's top brass might find those who have stayed for the first three days decide to give their wallets, and livers, a day off and watch the final day on the box.

They will also find that Cheltenham on Saturday has plenty of competition when it comes to sports bulletins - and, therefore, exposure.

Around this time of the year, there are FA Cup quarter-finals to think about, not to mention the conclusion of the Six Nations rugby.

Do you think the racing will get a look in if England are on the verge of the Grand Slam? Thought not.

Let this be a warning to Cheltenham bosses and Racing For Change, who might be looking to embrace the change.

If you meddle by moving the Thursday card to Saturday, not only will you destroy the character of the Cheltenham Festival - you could end up poorer as a result.

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Saturday at the Cheltenham Festival would be a royal success

The popularity of weekend racing at Royal Ascot shows Cheltenham could find a new and lasting audience.

There is a sense of inevitability that the Cheltenham Festival will run from Wednesday to Saturday some time soon, if not in 2012 then probably the year after that. There are still plenty of issues to address, not least what will happen to the Midlands National, the biggest race of the season at Uttoxeter, but there is also a widespread acceptance that racing needs to make more of its major assets. On that basis, a Festival held entirely on weekdays looks like an event with an afternoon going to waste.

The potential for a Cheltenham Festival Saturday to open up the meeting to a new audience has already been demonstrated by the remarkable success of Ascot's fifth day at the Royal meeting.

The conservatives did not like it, because a four-day Royal meeting was the way it had always been done, but even the most reactionary elements could not object to a "one-off" Royal Saturday in 2002 to celebrate the Queen's Golden Jubilee. Then, when 57,000 people turned up, it was duly confirmed as a permanent fixture, and less than 10 years later, it has now overtaken Ladies' Day on Thursday as the best-attended day of the meeting.

It might seem unfair to compare a midsummer Flat festival with one over the jumps in March, but in many ways, Cheltenham has more in common with Royal Ascot than it does with an ordinary jumps card.

The point about both meetings is that people are willing to buy into the event itself, rather than any particular race. The Cheltenham or Ascot "brand" guarantees the quality of the sporting action, and the relative standard from one day to the next is a secondary consideration. After all, if the quality of the racing was the only thing that mattered, Ascot would have its best crowd of the week on Tuesday, and its worst on Saturday. In fact, it's often the other way around.

Not all of the 80,000 people who went to the Royal Saturday last June were first-timers, but at the same time, you cannot summon up that many fresh ticket sales in less than 10 years simply from the existing customer base.

So several thousand people, perhaps several tens of thousands, have decided to go to the Royal meeting since 2002 because, at last, it is relatively easy for them to do so. Some will never go again, some will return but only to Ascot, others may try a different day at the Royal meeting, or branch out to Goodwood or Newmarket or a course that is closer to home. And a few may even be so taken with the sport that one day they buy a horse of their own, with the dream of racing it at Ascot.

Such are the potential benefits of broadening racing's audience. It is not the initial £20 or so from the gate money that matters most, but the hundreds or thousands that could follow. The punters cramming into Ascot on Royal Saturday were willing to take that first step, they just needed a little encouragement.

That is why a closing Cheltenham Saturday with the World Hurdle as its feature race, rather than the Gold Cup, makes a great deal of sense. Cheltenham would make lots of extra money from ticket sales, conceivably ending up with another attendance to rival the Gold Cup the previous day, a good chunk of which will go back into prize-money.

Thousands of people would get a chance to experience Cheltenham for the first time without taking time off work (and as anyone who has been there will testify, it tends to be an experience you want to repeat).

And the diehards who never much cared for the four-day Festival in the first place? They can give it a miss, and go back to their three-day experience.

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Moss Bros Day - Wednesday 28th April - FREE Raceday

Ascot Racecourse joins the new Racing for Change initative to offer FREE racing at Ascot on Wednesday 28th April in the Grandstand Admission area.

The Flat season curtain raiser features the £65,000 Group Three Sagaro Stakes, one of the most important trial races for next month's Gold Cup on the third day of the Royal Meeting. Additionally, there are two Listed races which are also sure to provide clues to races at the Royal Meeting – the Cleanevent Pavilion Stakes and the Britain’s Got Talent Paradise Stakes.

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Royal Ascot : Notable Races

Royal Ascot

• Coventry Stakes
• King's Stand Stakes
• St. James's Palace Stakes 
• Queen Anne Stakes 
• Jersey Stakes
• Windsor Forest Stakes
• Prince of Wales's Stakes 
• Royal Hunt Cup
• Queen Mary Stakes
• Norfolk Stakes
• Ribblesdale Stakes
• Ascot Gold Cup 
• Albany Stakes
• King Edward VII Stakes
• Coronation Stakes 
• Queen's Vase
• Chesham Stakes
• Hardwicke Stakes
• Golden Jubilee Stakes 
• Wokingham Stakes
• Queen Alexandra Stakes

Other flat races

• Sagaro Stakes
• Summer Mile Stakes
• Princess Margaret Stakes
• King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes 
• Royal Lodge Stakes
• Fillies' Mile
• Queen Elizabeth II Stakes 
• Cumberland Lodge Stakes
• Diadem Stakes
• Bengough Memorial Stakes
• Cornwallis Stakes
• Autumn Stakes
• UAE President's Cup

National Hunt races:

• Long Walk Hurdle
• Victor Chandler Chase
• Ascot Chase
• Reynoldstown Novices' Chase

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Royal Ascot Betting

A fantastic 5 days of action with the highlight of the week being the Ascot Gold Cup. You may want to check all the 2010 Royal Ascot Results on our resutls archive.

The 2009 Meeting got underway with victory for Mastercraftsman who was the star on Day 1 winning in a thrilling finish with Delegator. Day 2 saw Vision D'Etat claim the Prince of Wales Stakes ahead of Tartan Bearer in the feature race of the day to give the bookies a boost after taking a mauling on Day 1.

Yeats won the Ascot Gold for a record breaking 4th consecutive year with a stunning performance on Thursday. Friday has seen Ghanaati win the Coronation stakes in fine style. The final day saw Art Connoisseur win the Golden Jubilee

Given the quality of the Royal Ascot races, the meeting is one of the busiest weeks of the year for Bookmakers. It is estimated that over £300 million of bets will be placed on Royal Ascot in 2009, the majority of which will be placed using the internet. Competition is fierce between the online bookies as they compete for your custom and with this, it is the punter who wins as they secure the best odds on all races and take advantage of the many Royal Ascot free bets and cashback offers that the various bookmakers have on offer.

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Horses in training

Prompter

This son of Motivator is a real chip off the old block in that he possesses the typical Motivator head, shoulder and general outlook; a very nice colt with plenty of ability.

This colt has done particularly well and there is no question that he is a more substantial horse to look at this year. He has a somewhat wintry coat and perhaps he doesn’t quite look as right in his skin as some of the others I saw but this will all change when his exercise is stepped up in February. Like all of Michael Bell’s horses he will only be trotting throughout January. The long term plan is to aim him at the Dee Stakes (Gr 3) at Chester on 7th May and to very much take it one step at a time from there.

Pollenator is a neat, strong, racy filly who has similar characteristics to her sire and was very eye-catching on the gallops as a two year old. She followed up her Newmarket maiden victory with a fantastic win in the DFS May Hill Stakes (Gr 2) at Doncaster in the Autumn before coming to Highclere Stud for a well deserved break.

I was thrilled to bits with this filly when I saw her today at the Stud recently. She really has developed in all of the right places and looked an absolute picture of health. She will return to Richard Hannon towards the end of January and she is likely to head for one of the 1,000 Guineas trials or possibly even go straight for the race itself. It will be interesting to see how far she stays but we will know a lot more when she has taken on the best fillies over a mile. I suspect that she will stay up to a mile and a quarter but who knows whether she will get the Oaks trip!

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RARC : Number of Horses : 6

The Royal Ascot Racing Club was launched in 1997 and provides its members with a fantastic opportunity to enjoy the world’s finest racing at the world’s most famous racecourse, in unparalleled style and comfort. The Club is unique providing as it does the very best on track facilities at Ascot in a prime location with superb catering by "Rhubarb".

The Club 's horses are managed by Highclere and have enjoyed considerable success during its first ten years, most notably with Motivator, winner of The Vodafone Derby (Gr1) at Epsom in 2005. Motivator also won both the Racing Post Trophy (Gr1) at Doncaster in 2004 and The Totesport Dante Stakes (Gr2) at York in 2005.

The Royal Ascot Racing Club has one NH horse and five flat horses in training and members are kept fully up to date on their progress. The Club silks are white with dark blue armlets and a dark blue cap.

Tickets of this fabulous event "Royal Ascot" will be available with nominal prices only at premierevents.co.uk.