Steve Jones: “The five day Cheltenham Festival chat is back. It must be silly season”

WHEN I was a trainee news reporter we had something called silly season.

It was back in the days when local newspapers actually printed something you could roll up to swat flies with rather than producing online stories about houses for sale 60 miles away and reports of angry people on social media with strange made-up names.

Silly season came round every summer when most people were on holiday (remember them?) and nothing much of note seemed to be happening.

Of course, there were still pages to be filled as advertising had been sold and stories needed to be found.

The newsroom wasn’t the most pleasant place on God’s earth at 9.30am if those of us at the coal face hadn’t come up with anything deemed suitable for a front page splash.

I seem to remember we once had a tale about a young lad who wanted to become a professional wrestler under the snigger-inducing headline of ‘I’m Going To Be King Of The Ring’.

Usually, however, such stories were not allowed to make it anywhere near the front of the paper so the conundrum remained the same – how could one magic up a worthwhile story from nowhere?

One of the favourite silly season tactics was to look up what was viewed as an acceptable splash the previous summer and to, er, recycle it.

This was, basically, speaking to the same people, about the same subject and coming up with the same story that hadn’t moved forward an inch and confidently serving it up as award-winning journalism.

Which brings me on to rumours that a five-day Cheltenham Festival is on the horizon. You may have heard them before but that never stops the predictable social media uproar that goes with them.

It’s an emotive subject. You’ve got those who would happily go back to a three-day Festival when beer was 50p a pint, the bookies bet to 102 per cent over-round and every race was stuffed with champions.

Others don’t want an extra day because it would only mean more non-racing fans were allowed in just for a day out.

So, unless they make tweed underwear a condition of entry and quiz everyone trying to squeeze through the gates on their knowledge of sectional times, in their eyes it would be a backwards step.

There’s also the valid concern about more races diluting the championship races and allowing the top horses to avoid each other for evermore.

It might only be an extra two races as a fifth day would probably involve taking a race from each of the four cards and adding a couple more.

That would mean six races on each of the five days and a clear reduction in value for money with 14 per cent less races. I’ll bet there’ll be no plans for a 14 per cent reduction in entry fees if a fifth day did ever come to fruition.

Those who might bang the drum for a five-day Cheltenham Festival at the course’s owners, The Jockey Club, would point to the financial benefits to racing at a time when the pot is hardly overflowing with dough.

These are arguments that are reignited every time someone breaks the news that Cheltenham week might be stretched out to include the Saturday.

The official line is that there are no plans to add an extra day to jump racing’s greatest meeting in 2022 and, short of borrowing Mystic Meg’s crystal ball, it would be pretty hard to predict what might happen in future years.

It’s probably inevitable it will happen at some stage and it’s equally likely that there’ll be another dozen exclusives revealing that plans to extend the Festival are back on the table, in the melting pot and topping the agenda, long before it actually happens.

After all, it is silly season, but spare a thought for us poor journalists when it is confirmed. What will we do then?

Six-day Cheltenham Festival, anyone?