The Gerry Feilden has been won by Buck House, Barnbrook Again and Kribensis - it's sad to see how far it has slipped down the pecking order

This weekend marked 70 years since the first running of Newbury’s big jumps meeting in its current slot. There was no Coral Gold Cup in those days (the race, then known as the Hennessy, was first moved to Newbury in 1960), but there was one race with which we are all very familiar today – the Gerry Feilden.

Back then it was the Berkshire Hurdle, an open two-mile handicap transferred from the track’s mid-December meeting and won by Syrte, trained by Ryan Price and ridden by Fred Winter.

The race has since had a fascinating and high-class history. Perhaps the first winner of distinction was Salmon Spray, whose 1963 victory was followed three years later by success in the Champion Hurdle, a trend which was to grow after the conditions were altered in 1969 to restrict the race to those aged four and five, making it an ideal early target for horses just out of novice company that didn’t require them to take on seasoned hurdlers.