Under orders: Getting to know the Cheltenham types

Horse-racing's big jamboree gets under way today, with hundreds of thousands descending on the Cotswolds course. Richard Edmondson introduces a magnificent spectacle and magical party

All of humanity - and it will feel like that to those who actually squeeze into the quaintly named Prestbury Park - will be at Cheltenham racecourse this afternoon when the drawbridge is lowered for the storming masses at the outset of the festival of 2006.

It is said that the great democracy of National Hunt racing is such that it attracts both the duchess and the dustman. While one is likely to be a tiara-bearing owner and the other a nail-chewing penny punter, the point is well made. Everything human under the sun will be represented at the Cotswolds amphitheatre today.

In terms of muddy festivals where the simple act of attendance, as much as enjoyment, is the guiding criterion, only Glastonbury can compare. This is crunch time for the whole of the winter season for all who choose to participate in jumps racing: trainers, owners, jockeys, bookmakers and punters alike. Like a camel visiting a watering hole, just one good sup at the cup of good fortune here will fortify for many weeks, even months, to come.

There is an attendance version of Parkinson's law about the festival in that no matter how many new grandstands are constructed it always seems to be horribly heaving. No sardine would ever be treated this way. Yet this is the appeal, the quest to survive four days both physically and financially.

The swift movements and noises begin at lunchtime, when the helicopters of the rich and famous buzz in over the brow of Cleeve Hill and swoop down to Prestbury Park like fighter craft over the Mekong delta. It is a feature of the festival that it appears at the end of another clamour, a particularly long drum roll. And the magic seems to be that when the cymbal is crashed, the event (and it is an event as much as a horseracing spectacle) never seems to disappoint.

Of all the noises in sport, perhaps the great roar before the opening Supreme Novices' Hurdle is the most passionate. "That's as much about kinship as about the horses," Edward Gillespie, the Cheltenham managing director, says. "It's a recognition that the various clans have survived another year and have returned to the great games."

In the modern era, the festival is, rather cruelly, spread over four days, which is rather like adding 10 miles to the marathon. Like the somewhat easier athletic pursuit, Cheltenham involves frequent liquid stops, at bucolic sounding spots such as Tewkesbury, Evesham and Painswick.

All visitors, though, have to puncture an unsavoury cordon outside the racecourse proper, the ticket touts as charming as fleas outside the main entrances. Other delightful creatures collect for a donkey sanctuary on the way in and orchestrate "Find The Lady" on the green baize on the way out.

The Costwolds disappear for this week under a scrum of visitors making their annual pilgrimage to Gloucestershire. Their one-off appearance is greeted with the matchless prices charged by the sharp-eyed hoteliers of the spa town.

For the festival is not a challenge to be taken lightly for beast or man. The planning usually starts just as the garbage trucks flick on their headlamps and scoop the detritus of racecards, betting slips and food containers from the precincts just after the final race.

Along with an emotional involvement, there is of course the financial. Irish wives (and husbands) have great cause for suspicion if their spouses unusually suggest they will are popping out to the corner shop around the middle of March.

The Hibernian invasion - both equine and human - is the vital ingredient of the festival, a presence that creates all the fervour of a dogfight with none of the violence. Funding it can be a 12-month exercise and many visitors from across the Irish Sea have a mental thermometer mercury level as they gradually accrue a fighting fund.

For some souls, there is never enough. Too many tales abound to be considered apocryphal of men whose failure in the ferry poker schools means their bankroll is extinguished before they even get to glimpse the escarpment of Cleeve Hill. The festival is the most murderous protracted betting contest of the year. Only when the smoke clears after the concluding County Hurdle can the sums be done. This span of 96 hours is fundamental to the annual results of most bookmakers.

In this battlefield of skirmishes, the biggest blades are wielded by two men. The bookmaker is Freddie Williams, who makes his fortune from a bottling plant in his native Scotland and puts it all in jeopardy over four days down south.

The modern Cheltenham finds Freddie trying to avoid a nightmare at the hands of the legendary punter, JP McManus, to whom he nervously offers a cape whenever jump racing's biggest owner enters the ring.

"These days it's head to head between JP and Freddie Williams," a ring veteran says. "At the Paddy Power meeting, he had £100,000 each-way on Lingo at 13-2 and that won. There was another race when he wanted £500,000 on at 5-2 and Freddie asked him if he understood it was not whisky he was bottling and selling. He still got £100,000 on and the horse won from here to New York. He still comes down to the ring himself, maybe with [manager] Frank Berry at his shoulder, but he does the action. He is still a sort of kindred spirit in there. It is a place where he can feel at home."

McManus, himself once of Ireland but now a tax exile in Geneva, endured an uncomfortable festival 12 months ago, at a time when he and his great business confederate, John Magnier, were selling their Manchester United stakeholding to Malcolm Glazer.

Now he is back and ready to monitor events from the eyrie of his crowded box. "I've as much enthusiasm as ever," he says. "The year centres on Cheltenham. All roads lead to it. You're always looking for a horse for the festival or even for one the year after that. There's plenty of planning even if it hardly ever works out."

The festival would survive without McManus. But, just like a trifle without cream, it would seem as if a rather essential ingredient was missing. JP McManus doesn't miss Cheltenham festivals. They miss him, such as when foot-and-mouth occurred. He first went in 1973 when The Dikler won the Gold Cup, beating Pendil, and has not missed any of the action since.

"He is one of those characters for whom the festival is in the bloodstream," Edward Gillespie says. "He sets the tone for a lot of people who like to believe his presence and attention lends credibility to the event.

"I try to call in at his box but I don't get beyond the corridor. It is like the Marx brothers on the cruise liner in there. There are so many people. There would not be a better box or a fuller box, and, if it is not quite on the line, they seldom get beat when they go past him in front."

The Grand National apart, the festival is the apex for the small men of the sport. For some jockeys, just to get a ride at the festival is a career-making wonder. Just occasionally a little guy (both in size and repute) wins to define his entire career.

"Like last year, when Mattie Batchelor had his first festival winner [riding from the last without irons to win the Jewson Novices' Handicap Chase on King Harald] after he'd lost his mother and he was in trouble with the Jockey Club," Jim Culloty, the jockey who rode Best Mate to a hat-trick of Gold Cup successes, says. "The stands might not have been shouting for the horse but you should have heard the racket inside the weighing room. That was pure poetry."

The real pressure, though, is reserved for the trainers, those purveyors of dreams whose promises return to be questioned at a festival. To get a horse to this summit is as difficult as it might be physically in the Himalayas, but meeting success is guaranteed only to the relative few. A visit to the libraries in the district this week would find that all the books of trainers' excuses are out.

Cheltenham will soon be home to the world's largest collection of waxed jackets, "character" braces and pinkie rings. The privileged are in town.

They arrive in vehicles with stickers bearing the motto "The Countryside Matters", even if the most recent countryside matter they have encountered is that which they have splattered around with their off-road monsters.

These trucks encrusted with designer mud invariably contain absurdly optimistic hampers. The words "picnic" and "March" should never appear in the same sentence. Unless you are an Inuit, outdoor eating should not take place with ice on your boots, but it happens at the festival. Posh people trying to eat vols au vents and game paté while wearing mittens and woolly hats.

No wonder they are winners in life only. The rest of us must settle for rather more minor triumphs and, in the melée of tips, perhaps it is best to take heed of the most celebrated punter of them all.

"Brave Inca in the Champion Hurdle is going to take an enormous amount of beating," JP McManus says. "Of all the horses at the meeting, he's the one that I would like to own."

The corporate raider

Like the owner, is used to having his judgement praised and his boots licked. Housed in an uncomfortable and pokey box, but at least removed from the dreadful ordinary people who keep him in business. Wants to know when Arkle is running.

The trainer's wife

Beautifully decorated figure. Part trophy spouse, part hostess. Attempts to keep everyone happy - apart from the person who appears in the trainer's bill - behind a smile which seems to have been applied with a pneumatic drill

The trainer

A nervous heap of tweed for whom this is the defining week of the year. Just one victory justifies a professional existence and those odd expenses (first-class travel, Dom Perignon, mistress's flat) which are tucked away in the bills

The bookmaker

He may have got his complexion from St Kitts or a sunbed. The only one cheering when the nation's favourite horse falls over and breaks its neck in the Gold Cup

The owner

Self-confident City type. No need for guides - he is an expert on everything. Knows the lot about jump racing, apart from the fact it burns money quicker than fire

The sad gambler

With a pair of binoculars that Rommel might have used to scan the African horizon, he has a clump of badges from UK courses. "I've been there," is the message the badges convey. "And I'm a prat"

The jockey

Apprehensive figure who recognises he is about to step onto a significant stage: either a rostrum or a scaffold. A man who stuffs the rulebook into a shredder before going out to hit his horse as many times as his energy will allow

The Irish punter

Dishevelled fella who has already spent moonlit hours and fortunes gambling with his fellow voyagers on the journey over. Either has nothing but food and alcohol stains around his suit or notes bulging from every clothing orifice

The landed gentry

A group doomed to walk the earth in search of their chins. In the know with trainers, fellow owners, jockeys and all the rest, yet still spectacularly unsuccessful at gambling. Proof that meritocracy is nothing more than an absurd concept