The Cheltenham Et Al

Over the years the author has both described the sport of horseracing with a rare wit and reported from the heat of the action as senior presenter on Channel 4 racing. This title offers a collection of his very best articles from The Sporting Life and the Racing Post.

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Alastair Down on the Cheltenham Festival: 'To go there and stand witness to extraordinary events is a rare and wonderful act of being at one with your fellow clutterers of the planet.' On his favourite racehorse: 'I'll still thump anyone who doesn't appreciate that Rondetto was the greatest chaser of all time.' On recovering after an over-indulgent day at Longchamp: 'I just wish to be left alone with my thoughts and sincere hopes that my liver, which I mailed home by separate refrigerated container, will arrive soon.' On Frankel's last race: 'There were tears speckling the cheers, because there is something almost inexplicably humbling about being in the presence of greatness of this magnitude.' For over thirty years Alastair Down has written about horseracing with an unrivalled cocktail of wit, insight, passion and descriptive power - a combination which has brought him legions of enthusiastic readers, both within and beyond the racing world.
Cheltenham et Al offers a generous collection of his very best columns, providing the Down angle on the great horses, jockeys and trainers; the famous races which remain indelibly in the sport's collective memory; the controversies; the laughs - in short, the highs and the lows of racing. By turns moving, uplifting and laugh-out-loud funny, this book provides ample proof of one racing certainty: that no one catches the spirit of racing as Alastair Down does.