NICKY HENDERSON admits it’s sad the Cheltenham Festival will be run behind closed doors, but just hopes racing can keep the show on the road.
With Britain set to be plunged into a further lockdown, Cheltenham confirmed they’d given up on any plans for a crowd.
At best, the course hopes to welcome owners and 2000 paid-up punters through the gates in March for the four-day meeting.
It’s a far cry from the packed grandstands at last year’s Festival, one of the last major sporting events to enjoy a full crowd.
But Henderson just hopes the likes of Altior, Epatante and Shishkin have races to run in.
He said: “It’s very sad that Cheltenham has said there will be little to no crowd, even if it was probably inevitable.
“We all want crowds and they are part and parcel of the whole thing, especially at Cheltenham and that is what makes it to be honest.
“It’s a real shame and we’ve hardly had a crowd for the jumps season whatsoever.
“But we’re now just praying that we can keep racing, that would be the bigger disaster. That’s what everyone is nervous about now.
“We’ve managed to keep it going the whole time thankfully, so hopefully that can continue.”
Cheltenham Director Ian Renton admitted the Jockey Club – owner of Cheltenham and 14 other courses – had lost £100 million in revenue last year.
But thankfully Cheltenham has an insurance policy in place for the Festival.
He told the Nick Luck Daily Podcast: “We’ve now come to accept that it’s going to be a very, very different Festival.
“The team are now concentrating on just having the best possible racing, looking at everything we can do in terms of encouraging the right horses to be with us, perfect ground to ensure we can produce a perfect four days racing even if people will be viewing it on television rather than in person.”
Asked if Cheltenham had given up preparing and hoping for a crowd, Renton added: “I think we will be parking that in the next week or two.
“At the very least I would hope that we can have owners present and hopefully getting back to the days of December where we had a crowd totalling 2000 people on each of those days. That is the sort of expectation we’re currently looking at.”
There was better news for Irish trainers who Renton expects will be able to send their stars over in March unlike over the Christmas period when horses were banned from travelling.
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