Noise returns to a place that should never be silent - Cheltenham fans are back

It was not a roar. It was not really even a whimper. It was enough.

At one end of the long row of steppings someone cheered as Cheltenham's opening race began. A good 100 metres away, at the other end of the steppings, someone else did the same. That was it, two cheers from two people far apart from each other, but it was something – a something that was much better than the nothing they have had to endure.

There is no place like Cheltenham and there are no racegoers like Cheltenham racegoers. The hardy faithful had been denied access to their temple since the 2020 festival concluded in March. The final winner that Friday was Indefatigable. So, too, has been the patience of those annual members who saw her win then and finally got to return for an afternoon in which they were a bigger deal than the racing they watched.