'Good' has become a dirty word in jump racing - and it means clerks of the course are walking an impossible tightrope

In many ways, it was a funny old Cheltenham Festival, with the sideshow stories gaining almost as much attention as the action on the track. 

The first major flashpoint was the heated exchange between Nico de Boinville and Declan Queally during one of numerous shambolic starts, which ended with a rather strange rapprochement live on ITV Racing.

Then, not long after the hatchet was buried, we had another head-to-head between Willie Mullins and clerk of the course Jon Pullin, with the former firing off an extraordinary warning that he would stop bringing horses to the festival due to concerns about the ground, having felt compelled to withdraw Fact To File from the Ryanair Chase.