It’s that competitive - there is nowhere else like it and as for the nerves and anticipation, even if this is my 45th year, I still feel a school kid, bonkers about it as I did as a child!

On Frankel’s last race: ‘There were tears speckling the cheers, because there is something almost inexplicably humbling about being in the presence of greatness of this magnitude. Following an unsuccessful stint running a betting syndicate after graduating, Down became a form analyst before being invited to apply for a job on The Sporting Life in 1981. It had to be – its students at the time also included one Edward Gillespie who later became Cheltenham Racecourse’s managing director and took the National Hunt Festival to new heights.

Julians SPK1000 Malta, is licensed and regulated by the Malta Gaming Authority under Licence Number MGA/CRP/131/2006 (issued on 01 August 2018). When you’re young, you go all day and all night and then have an hour’s kip and then go again, now that I work at the meeting, it is very different but I love the way also that it has transmitted itself to the next generation - it just has this, almost evangelical ability to get the group gospel across, I mean my three children, they couldn’t name another race course, but they never miss a day at the Festival. In the old days you could muck about with them and get there because of the weight range of handicap was two stone and now that’s 4 or 5lbs, so it’s got to be the one that wins with a little bit ‘up its sleeve’ but they’ve all got ones, twos, threes and fours, whereas in the old days you could have six and you wouldn’t be put off if you thought that the man who trained them had the ‘brass neck’ to do it.

I can think of potato farmers who have had a double there and have won an Arkle and a County Hurdle, who nobody had heard of before or even since - and a retired steelworker from the north-east won a handicap and he only had five horses; now that to me, is part of the romance of jump racing and that is the bit that which we seem to have slightly lost.The loyalty and effort of our members make the Racing Forum the friendliest and most informative horse racing community.

I walked into the paddock with him and Geoff Lester after Collier Bay won the CH and value the video I have of that great moment.On a quiet day, a few souls who share my blood, and some of those friends who truly understood why that blood was ever quickened in that place in the month when the hares go mad, will perform a simple ceremony.

There is some cruelty in its beauty, it’s a very hard place and I have seen desperate tragedies to horse and human there and you know that those risks are being run on your behalf. Well I love jump racing in particular but my favourite four days of the year is definitely Cheltenham. Alastair Down joined The Sporting Life in 1981 and remained with that paper until its closure in 1998, at which point he joined the Racing Post. There is nowhere else like Cheltenham for that level of competition and excitement; you can fancy a horse all year and think it will win a race there and it may run the race of its life and still end up sixth!I’ve sat and discussed over the years with my great chum Ruby Walsh, the complexity and detail of riding at Cheltenham; all of the things you need to be aware of whilst riding in the races - everyone thinks these jockeys go out there and rides just their race on their horse. Some time later I waddled down to the ring where the bookies were doing the last sortings of their satchels. At the top of the hill all the dreams are still alive, the triumphs and tragedies of the long swoop down and hard haul up the hill to victory yet to unfold before the rapt ranks in the stands. It won at top weight and I remember running into Jim a day later and he grunted at me to say ‘hello’ as he always does; and I said to Jim, “Just to say, I’ve been driving a Ford Fiesta but next week I’ll be driving a Saab Turbo thanks to you! One of them said I had fulfilled their lifetime ambition as he went into his local pub in Shipston on Stour that night which was full of people from Cheltenham and he bought everyone in the pub a drink because he had backed it at 250/1!