CHELTENHAM Festival punters have been threatened with a booze ban during next year’s blockbuster meeting.
A local councillor wants to have ‘dry trains’ entering Cheltenham Spa station for all four days of the biggest event of the year.
Punters arriving at Cheltenham Festival by train could be stopped from drinking alcohol
Police believe the festival has an ‘alcohol problem’ – with wee-resistant paint being issued to locals last year to stop the blight of public urination and, reportedly, defecation.
Councillor David Willingham wants to go further though and ban booze on trains coming into the area altogether.
Some 135,000 people are thought to use the train station – the main one for the racecourse – during race week.
He said: “People turn up quite early in the morning, inebriated and falling off the trains.
“I’ve tried quite hard to lobby the British Transport Police and the train operating companies to run dry trains.
“They have the power to do it. They do it for football, they do it on some trains on Friday evenings in various parts of the country.
“Can we lobby to have the trains coming into Cheltenham in the early morning as dry?
“People are already a nuisance because they are so drunk before they have got passed Worcester, Bristol or Swindon and various other places.”
Punters are estimated to drink some 222,000 pints of Guinness during Cheltenham Festival.
The meeting is the peak of the National Hunt season as Ireland’s best travel over to Gloucester to take on their British rivals.
Some £1billion is staked during the week as punters from all over gather for a bet and a drink – but police are still concerned about anti-social behaviour.
Police crime commissioner Chris Nelson said: “There’s definitely more we can do but we’re moving in the right direction.
“I think things are better. Anti-social behaviour in that week has gone down, but it’s still a work in progress.
“Alcohol in the town is the single biggest problem the festival has and leads to the issues it has, like anti-social behaviour, misogyny and all the rest of it.
“People do things they wouldn’t do at any other time of the year.
“Society has an alcohol problem so it’s not just the Cheltenham Festival, but it’s probably the biggest single issue of the week and the one all those linked to it have to address.”
A big campaign was launched to get locals to cover their properties with wee-repellent paint.
But the ‘war on wee‘ ended up being a damp squib with only a few residents taking part.
Next year’s festival will be held March 12-15 and celebrates 100 years of the Gold Cup.
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