Cheltenham festival: The Fly can make up for my missing year

Jamie Osborne, who joins our team for the Festival, gives a jockey's view of the most important week of the season

IT IS the Holy Grail of National Hunt racing. Many tracks in England and Ireland stage festivals but for jockeys there is only one genuine event, and that takes place on three days at Cheltenham this week.

Leaving aside the Grand National, the 20 races staged today, tomorrow and Thursday are quite simply the most important, prestigious and keenly fought of the season. Outside, in the stands, in the bars and marquees, it is a punters' paradise set in a bacchanal. But for us, during these three days nothing else matters, the outside world ceases to exist.

It is hard to imagine a greater contrast than that between the atmosphere in the changing room at Cheltenham and what is going on outside. There will be around 100 jockeys at the Festival this week. For most of us it is the culmination of months of hard work, a daily grind of early-morning riding out, followed by long car journeys to remote tracks. The constant slog of competition can take some of the buzz away but even the most hardened professional pilots light up with anticipation when Cheltenham is mentioned.

We have fought for the best rides and now it is time to go into battle. This is our chance to ply our trade on a bigger stage, to make some money, to bathe in a bit of glory and to leave an indelible mark in racing's history books.

Of course the atmosphere in the changing room is tense and highly charged. I have seen men in tears, I have seen them fighting, and I have seen them beside themselves with the euphoria of winning. There is nothing else like it.

Riding a winner at Cheltenham is one of the greatest thrills in the sport. This year I have a solid book of rides to help me achieve that goal. Barry Hills and Ian Balding are trainers more readily associated with Royal Ascot but they provide me with my first two rides.

Barry Hills and I teamed up in 1992 to win the Stayers' Hurdle with Nomadic Way and this year we have a realistic chance of adding to that victory with The Fly. While he has only jumped once in public when winning a novices' event at Newbury in February, his style of hurdling is quick and accurate and he certainly doesn't lack any enthusiasm. I am confident that given normal luck in running he can outclass a strong Irish challenge.

Ian Balding's Grey Shot would prefer to be running on firmer ground than we will experience today but he still holds a realistic chance of finishing in the frame. It is hard to see anything beating last year's winner, Istabraq, but the race for the places is wide open.

Kadou Nonantais has sensibly side-stepped tomorrow's Royal & SunAlliance Novices' Chase, leaving me free to partner Lord Of The River in that race, the staying-novice chasers' championship. Kadou Nonantais instead runs in today's William Hill Handicap Chase and I believe that his bold front- running style will create trouble for the opposition and he can make all to win.

Today's rides are completed by Ebullient Equiname in the Stakis Casinos Final. Nicky Henderson's charge holds solid claims in a race in which the winner will not be easy to find.

For me, this year's Cheltenham is more significant than any other. I had competed every season since 1986 until last year when I was forced, through injury, to miss out for the first time.

Last year was not exactly a great one for me and Cheltenham was the low point. I remember standing reluctantly at the edge of the paddock trying to sound cheerful and enthusiastic in front of the Racing Channel cameras, while inside I was experiencing the flip side of Cheltenham euphoria.

My left hand, injured in a fall five months before, was still cold, deformed and rigid. I was on police bail, having been arrested in January at the start of the cack-handed Metropolitan Police investigation into racing. I was convinced that everyone around me was certain I was guilty. I doubted if I would ever ride again, and worst of all my mother had just bollocked me for being scruffy. I felt that I had lost the ability to achieve the changes which would get me back in the middle of the paddock, rather than on its edge.

Today, 12 months later, I can smile at these memories and be thankful that I will be back in the place which I was afraid I had left for good. My hand is back to normal, and the police investigation exonerated me. But last year's experience made me realise the power that Cheltenham has to heighten the senses and magnify emotions. I may have entered the winner's enclosure a dozen times in other years, but to do it again this week would mean more to me than at any other time.

Jamie Osborne will carry the logo of The Independent on his breeches and collar throughout the Cheltenham Festival