A rare day when the laughter went from Cheltenham life

In my collection of books on the Great War is one carrying the fine title The Laughter Goes From Life, an account of time spent in the trenches by Cornishman Thomas Penrose Marks, who survived but did not do so unmarked.

I can think of no more apt phrase than the laughter goes from life to describe the effects of events on Sunday at Cheltenham. There is always a small element of ‘after the lord mayor’s show’ to the third day of the Open meeting but this was of a different stripe

Sprinter Sacre was given a send-off to warm the heart but underpinning the cheers and applause was the feeling of an era ending, the light fantastic never to be tripped again.

He will be back of course, hamming it up for all he’s worth on Champion Chase day, the old actor treading once more the boards of his youth and pre-eminence.

We all hailed him because this was a farewell. Such things always come with pangs attached. It was part celebration and part wake, with plenty of tears from those closest to the horse.

But those tears ran pure salt with the death of Simonsig as in some palpable way his demise was magnified by the retirement of his old stablemate, in whose steps he was once expected to follow.

Time was when the names Sprinter Sacre and Simonsig were frequent bedfellows in the same sentence. Now they were again, though as part of a story of a far darker hue.

And of course the crowd picked up on the cruel momentousness of the afternoon.

It is always a different congregation on this particular Cheltenham Sunday.

Many a die-hard will have done Countryside Day and then the Saturday, but most of them give it a rest on the Sabbath as once the whole country used to do.

But, despite the smaller crowd and the greater proportion of folk having a day out, the mass antennae of those on course sensed that this was not like the other afternoons of pints and prosecco.

I never recall the old place in such a subdued mood. The joy largely sucked out of it, the roars muted and the raucous elbowed out by the reflective.

Of course there will have been plenty who were blissfully unaware of Simonsig’s fate as they busied themselves refuelling in the Arkle bar or the Centaur.

But for those cognisant of the grey’s fate it cast a pall and that is when it’s time to summon the pallbearers.

And although Simonsig had not won a race for three years and eight months, his remained a name with which to conjure. As Sprinter Sacre had proved, where there is Henderson there is hope, and who could say with certainty that the old Seven Barrows magic could not have turned the water into wine once more.

We have been spoilt happily rotten in recent years for
top-class chasers. Simonsig had annihilated his Neptune field at the 2012 festival and, while he had not set the Severn on fire when winning the Arkle 12 months later, he was still hugely exciting and looked to be the pretender to many a throne.

Sadly for the affable Ronnie Bartlett it was not to be and the memory of great days in March will always be slightly clouded by might-have-beens.

This is not the time to wax portentous about prices paid by horses on our behalf. Certainly not while Freddy Tylicki remains ill in
St George’s Tooting and people in cities, towns and villages across the land had spent Sunday morning heads bowed round memorials to far more grievous losses.

But you would have to be carved from flint not to let your heart go out to Henderson and his team. There are few more stark places than an empty box shorn of warmth and life.

In his song Mother And Child Reunion, Paul Simon wrote of “this strange and mournful day”. That is exactly how it felt.

Our pride in remembrance never fails to move

It was, rather like those sickly chocolate mints, after eight when I headed home from Cheltenham to watch events from the Cenotaph earlier in the day presented by David Dimbleby with some first-rate interviews from Sophie Raworth.