ON-OFF SAGA THAT COST RACING £12M

The decade that gave us decimalisation, flared trousers, the Sex Pistols and Britain's first woman Prime Minister is also toasted as the golden age of two-mile hurdlers.

- BY DAVID YATES

REMEMBER the Cheltenham Festival when nothing happened? As the countdown progressed to the 2001 Festival, Istrabraq was a hot favourite for a record-breaking fourth Champion Hurdle triumph and King George VI Chase victor First Gold led the betting for the Cheltenham Gold Cup.

But on February 19, vets detected foot-and-mouth disease in pigs at an abattoir in the Essex village of Little Warley - and so began a chain of events that would see the meeting cancelled for the first time since World War II.

Within days, further cases were confirmed in Northumberland and Devon and the then British Horseracing Board faced calls to suspend fixtures.

Horses, unlike cattle, sheep and pigs, are immune to the virus, so the regulator resisted.

Vehicle tyres and the soles of racegoers' footwear - both are transporters of bacteria - were to be disinfected at the racecourse gates until, as the tally of positive tests grew, a seven-day suspension was announced on February 27.