Cheltenham does not set the rules but again obeyed them as fans flooded back

Build it and they will come. Offer the opportunity to go racing at Cheltenham for the first time in 19 months and they will come in their droves.

Cheltenham's season once began earlier than it does now. It also kicked off on a different track. Aside from the cross-country circuit, galloped on only three times a year, Cheltenham has the Old course, used in October, November and for the first two days of the festival, and the New course, on which the action takes place on all other racedays. Through the first half of the 1990s there was not just the Old and New. There was also the Park.

Introduced on October 3, 1990, and discontinued on September 28, 1995, the Park course was designed to make Cheltenham a much flatter racing venue at a time of year when ground conditions were generally quicker. For the inaugural Park course fixture the going description was officially firm, with three of the six races contested by only four runners. Yet those horses were at least not required to make that iconic descent from the top of the hill and down towards the grandstands.