Hope springs eternal once again as Cheltenham crowd embraces brave new world

Crowd figures held up strongly at Cheltenham on the second day of the October meeting. There, that wasn't a sentence you ever thought you'd be reading, was it?

In fact, at the risk of being accused of Panglossian optimism (another thing you never thought you'd read in the Racing Post), I'd like to point out that the figure of 19,471 was a record for this day's sport, up from 19,069 last year and 17,724 in 2019. Never let it be said that I don't do my research (or at least get somebody else to do it for me).

So, has the doom and gloom dispersed? Has the economy experienced an unprecedented upturn while I wasn't looking? Amid all the pandemonium, is there a benevolent God after all?