“Last year's Festival was brutal, but we're ready to put it right”

The Guinness Village is, to Cheltenham racegoers, something of a field of dreams.

- MALIK OUZIA

It sits on the side of the track, at the foot of Prestbury Park's infamous hill, the topography urging punters toward its concrete embrace, like snooker balls destined for a wonky table's corner pocket.

As a folk band plays, winners and losers are as one, those waving the white hanky of another losing slip wearing the same smiles as those charged to victory by the magic of that dark liquid luck. It was here - perhaps seeking a bit of the latter - that Nico De Boinville found himself on the Friday afternoon of last year's Festival. As colleagues rode out the final races of the meeting, the No1 jockey to Nicky Henderson, the most successful British trainer in Cheltenham history, had been made a redundant force, pint instead of rein in hand at the end of a week that had been, by his own reckoning, a "no-show" from the start.

"We let a few horses run on the first day and it was pointless," says Henderson, who had gone to Cheltenham knowing his runners were under-performing badly and praying, rather than expecting, that they would suddenly come right. "You just lose confidence and heart."

In most cases, there was no specific physical issue or ailment, but rather some hidden, underlying factor that meant hardly any of the yard's horses were showing their true form. Of six to run on the opening day, five were pulled up before the finish. De Boinville attempts to explain: "It's like driving along the motorway at 70mph and suddenly the car just goes. 'Zzzzzzzz'. Then you're crawling along at 50mph. Then, eventually, it just stops and you're in the lay-by."