Punters are being ripped off at the Cheltenham Festival and something needs to be done about it

WHAT was I saying last week? Cheltenham never disappoints?

I might have to eat my words because I don’t like the direction the Festival is heading.

Paul EdwardsFans had a nightmare in the car parks at Cheltenham[/caption]

We all love this meeting, but there are some big problems which need to be addressed before fans are turned off for good.

I’ll start with the issues off the track and one that hasn’t got much coverage.

Earlier in the week, they ran out of food in the stable staff canteen – that is unacceptable.

These are the guys and girls who work ridiculously long hours to keep the sport running, without them it would not be able to function.

The least they can expect is to have a bite to eat during their break. Something tells me they never ran out of grub in the hospitality village.

There is undoubtedly an ongoing issue around value for money, and a lot of people feel like they are being royally ripped off.

Before you’ve coughed up 100 notes to get through the turnstiles and forked out a small fortune for a burger and chips, you might have paid £30 for parking.

And, as I’m sure you’ve seen this week, that didn’t even guarantee you were able to get the bloody thing out of the car park after racing.

There’s not much Cheltenham chiefs can do about the weather, but they should have been more prepared and had troublesome areas of grass covered in plastic boards to stop people getting stuck in the mud.

If you were lucky enough to park on dry land, it still took an absolute age to get off site. The parking and traffic chaos has been horrendous for years and it has already put a lot of folks off.

One fan, who organises a coach trip to the Festival every year, expressed his ‘disgust’ at being charged £75 to park in a waterlogged, muddy field when, he says, it had been free in the past.

Maybe they are passing down to punters the cost of putting on completely pointless warm-up acts?

For a number of years now we’ve had short sets in the parade ring 35 minutes before the first, this time from violin quartet Escala and Laura Wright who belted out ‘Unstoppable’, which nobody watched or paid much attention to.

It’s a total waste of time and money and little more than a vanity project – maybe if they saved on paying for musicians, they could knock a pound off the price of a pint?!

It strikes me that no expense is spared for corporate clients, high-rollers and toffs at the Festival, but, as is so often the case in life, the masses are fobbed off once they’ve paid their money.

And some are being made to feel unwelcome even before they’ve got through the gate.

One of my pals was pulled aside for a ‘random’ search on Tuesday, and before he was allowed in he had to provide his name and show photo ID.

No wonder crowd numbers have declined again – 229,000 attended this week, down from 241,000 last year. Five years ago, the meeting attracted a crowd of 266,000.

Life has not been easy for the written media, either, with limits on the number of people who had access to the winners’ enclosure immediately after races, while owners and trainers were whisked off by hoity-toity officials before we had a chance to ask questions.

Then there is the product on the track.

It’s surely just a matter of time before Willie Mullins saddles every single runner in a race at the Festival. If that happens, will the last one out please turn off the lights?

Wednesday’s Gallagher Novices Hurdle was an embarrassing spectacle – five runners from Closutton coming up the hill in a line, with two British longshots finishing legless in the distance.

There are few scenarios that turn off punters more than small fields and a parade of odds-on shots, and too many races are like that at Cheltenham nowadays.

They should really look at shaking up the programme, maybe introducing a few more handicaps as those were invariably the most exciting races of the week.

It just feels like the meeting is now run purely by bean counters and it definitely feels like it has lost a chunk of its soul.

Cheltenham is truly in danger of believing it’s own Jockey Club publicity and disappearing up where the sun don’t shine.

We shouldn’t let a memorable Thursday paper over the cracks – the atmosphere on the first two days was as subdued as I can remember.

A new track director will shortly be announced as the successor to the departing Ian Renton.

They have a big job on their hands, but also a brilliant opportunity to turn this ship around before it hits the rocks.