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. 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. The thing that’s changed, in my lifetime is that if you went to Cheltenham when you were young, little yards won lots of races, so it was great and it gave the meeting added flavour. We are a passionate community of over 55,000 horse racing fans, commentators and industry professionals.

In 1969 and 1970 he served as the president of the BP Oil Corporation, the company's American subsidiary, and negotiated its merger with Standard Oil of Ohio. Finance is provided by PayPal Credit (a trading name of PayPal UK Ltd, Whittaker House, Whittaker Avenue, Richmond-Upon-Thames, Surrey, United Kingdom, TW9 1EH). As Down freely admitted to The Yorkshire Post: “I am one of those people who have been lucky enough to pursue a passion for a living – and be paid for it.

His scholarly teachers at the exclusive Tonbridge School were, however, less enthusiastic – The Sporting Life was not available in the library and Down made arrangements to collect a copy from a nearby newsagent each morning. When you’re young, you go all day and all night and then have an hour’s kip and then go again, now that I work at the meeting, it is very different but I love the way also that it has transmitted itself to the next generation - it just has this, almost evangelical ability to get the group gospel across, I mean my three children, they couldn’t name another race course, but they never miss a day at the Festival. Andrew Marr made a documentary about post-war Britain and they shot some footage at the Festival and he came out with the line that, “there were as many nose studs as trilbies”, which is not strictly true, but it does embrace all society; a great sporting democracy of people from Ireland, Scotland, Wales and the north and the west, down to the Home Counties.

At the top of the hill all the dreams are still alive, the triumphs and tragedies of the long swoop down and hard haul up the hill to victory yet to unfold before the rapt ranks in the stands. Discover the joy of reading with us, your trusted source for affordable books that do not compromise on quality. This collection of articles from the Sporting Life and Racing Post are great memory joggers and add colour to back up pieces on old, famous and some obscure races and horses from Timeform and others. There’s a very good reason that that cheer goes up when the tapes go up; because people have been waiting for the start of the meeting or a particular race or the Gold Cup and they love it.

It didn’t make for easy viewing; you wouldn’t be able to have it now, the public wouldn’t stand for it. In 1935 Down had qualified as an officer and was commissioned into the 7th/9th Battalion, Royal Scots.