Cheltenham Festival being cancelled, but racing is a well-connected institution, and ahead it went. I attended the four-day race meeting every day, as I do every year, to cover the fixture for this paper.
The mood on the first day was excitement from the punters, and relief from those whose bottom line depends on the event. The attendance over the week was 251,684: just six per cent down on 2019.
By the second day, I had a growing sense that maybe we shouldn’t be there.People crammed six deep at the bars, drunken shouting, singing.
If you were going to design a virus dispersion hub, you could do worse than the indoor bits of a packed racecourse.The transgressive feeling was overtaken on day three by a surreal unease.
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