Why our unremitting Cheltenham Festival focus is vital for jump racing

The long road to the Cheltenham Festival is the central narrative of the jump racing season and Venetia Williams made no bones about it after Ibleo’s victory at Sandown on Saturday. "With a horse of this sort of level you're working back from the festival,” she said, immediately identifying the Grand Annual Chase as the race she had in mind for Ibleo.

Other voices have raised some discontent recently about the unremitting focus on the festival, arguing that the here and now of a Grade 1 win or an important Saturday success can be diminished by the continual rush to look forward to March, and undeniably there are some ways in which Cheltenham has a distorting effect on the shape of the season.

But there is a key aspect of the festival focus that is more positive – albeit it has been lost during this behind-closed-doors era. In normal times jumps fans will often see a festival-bound runner at their local track, whether it is an established name or a talked-about potential star, and that link between Cheltenham and other courses much lower down the ladder is a unifying one.