Cheltenham Festival
Posted in Horse Racing on December 16th, 2011 byThe Cheltenham Festival is a week-long National Hunt horse racing event which takes place annually in March.
It is incredibly popular with Irish visitors as it usually coincides with St. Patrick’s Day, and the prize money on offer within the Festival is second only to the Grand National.
The official title of the race is the National Hunt Meeting, which originated in 1860 at Market Harborough. It has been held at a number of courses over the years, including Prestbury Park and Warwick, prior to the establishment of the Cheltenham Gold Cup in 1924.
The event in 2011 comprised of twenty-eight races taking place over the course of four days. The Cheltenham festival Gold Cup took places on the final day of the Festival, and is widely considered the most significant race of the whole meeting.
Although extremely popular among punters and the gambling contingent of the United Kingdom and indeed large parts of the world, the event has come under much scrutiny from animal rights campaigners.
For a large number of years, there have been growing concerns from certain factions of society regarding the fatality rates of horses participating in the race. As a way to counteract the problem, organisers looked to re-site one of the more problematical fences and reduce the number of competitors in certain racers, but many still deem this an insufficient change.
More information about the Cheltenham festival can be found here.