Bryony, Alice and Violet, all 22, spend the whole of Cheltenham at Cheltenham. “We had a good day on Wednesday, didn’t we?” Alice said, coyly. I had to plumb the very depths of vulgarity to find out what “good” meant, finally ascertaining that their average bet is about £50, but never knowing for sure whether that was the stake or the winnings. Whatever you talk about at the races, you should never be able to denominate it in a currency.
“We’re local, we’ve always come here,” Byrony said. They know the jockeys. Violet is an assistant trainer. They know who drinks where when each horse comes in (the Plough, the Coach and Horses, the Bell in Stowe – depending). Cheltenham has changed, over time, but they defer to their friend Finn, 28, to describe (manscribe?) how: “They employ people to design these buildings who’ve got no taste. It’s really nouveau. Why is it all glass? Why couldn’t they have done it in Cotswold Stone?”
The Gold Cup is all about AP McCoy, who brings a tear so effortlessly to the eye of the seasoned race-goer that a casual observer would know instantly who to root for. “Not many people, for their entire career, could have been called Tony, and then go, ‘I want to be called AP.’ But we’ll give him that, because of who he is,” said Ben, 40.
But Violet fancies (not literally) Nico de Boinville, on Coneygree, so I put my money on him, thinking, well, if he wins, at least I know where he’ll be drinking later. This is the accessibility of racing, jumps especially, to the uninitiated: you need no prior experience to feel excited, and there’s none of that awful pain of the long-held allegiance. I would – will definitely – come again. But I was and shall remain very much of the party that is not wearing tweed.
On the 9.36am from Paddington, grey-green wool and polyester pin stripes sat side by side, clashing so badly they looked like they might be allergic to each other. You never actually see tweed next to anything other than tweed, I realised. A man I was eavesdropping on dived into his gin and tonic, saying “I woke up at half past five. I couldn’t get to sleep, it’s like Christmas. Walking through Elephant and Castle in this jacket was no joke.” He needn’t have worried, he just had a jacket on. He would have looked a lot weirder walking through Elephant and Castle in a seersucker, or a deer stalker, or a pair of incredibly woolly socks with tweed garters, or a cape. My opening gambit to Tom Finley, John Mason and Dom Woods, all 25, was “so, did you buy that outfit just for today?”, which I realised as I said it, was a little bit rude. “No, no,” said Tom, “I work in insurance, so I often dress like this.” “And I’m a farmer,” said John, “I love sitting on a tractor, but when it’s raining, I go to the races. Always dressed the same.” They also say that it’s changed, the redevelopment has edged out the families who live in the area, that the only people who can afford the boxes now are corporates, that “it’s all about the money,” Dom concluded. “I like it,” John said. “The more the merrier.”
The Gold Cup started at 3.20pm. Coneygree was out in front. I know nothing at all about racing, apart from the horse who starts in front always falls over.
“The thing with Cheltenham is that it’s more relaxed,” said Colin, 37, who is comparing it to Newmarket, and means (I think) that you can go there for a purely social purpose without having to pretend you’re that into horses. “Cheltenham is known for being more relaxed,” Cecil, 39, agreed, meaning something completely different, that it’s more relaxed than Ascot, and you don’t have to wear a hat. This is the start of a stag night for Keith, 35, organised by Wayne, 36. There are 18 of them, and one of them is about to get off the shuttle bus early because he didn’t have a wee before he got on. “It must take some organising,” I said to Wayne, sympathetically. “Not really. It’s like giving a woman two bottles of WKD, isn’t it?” he replied. Is it, though? “Can you put at the end, ‘I love Sarah’?” said Keith. The bus was so full that it struggled to pull out, as though it, too, had had a gin and tonic before 10am. Out of nowhere, the bus erupted with support for Jeremy Clarkson. I worried for a second that I could be lynched if my true views on Clarkson were known. But I think it would have been OK. It is a crowd that radiates kindness; an anonymous man – not Irish – put it down to the Irish influence. “It’s like a pilgrimage for them. And they’re kind, aren’t they?”
I always wondered what the appropriate noise was, when you’re a novice, watching a race. Shout the horse’s name? Shout “go faster”? It turns out, when you’re actually winning, the noises just tumble out of your mouth. “You got the winner, then, did you?” a kindly, disappointed McCoy supporter said at the end of the Gold Cup. “I BLOODY DID.” “I don’t know how you picked that,” he says. I got a tip.
