Our man David Ord devoured a game pie before talking handicap plunge horse Kopeck De Mee with the assessors at Cheltenham on Tuesday.
The Cheltenham Weights Lunch.
My word have I made that pay over the years. We’ve toured the Cotswolds in the culinary sense one year, from sausages to game pies via ham and pickles, we tasted the best of the region. Others showed a more varied palate to be fair.
World tours followed, always under the watchful eye of the portion police, but there were no disapproving glances if you decided to make return trips to Mexico and India as you lapped the room.
The event is there though to pull back the curtain on the – well weights – for the Festival handicaps. Nine this time around.
It lacks the razzmatazz of the Randox Grand National event, but local trainers are on hand and the men who crunched the numbers there to take questions and pelters.
There aren’t too many of the latter, mainly I suspect because Irish handlers aren’t represented.
And the handicappers have more evidence to work with, changes to the qualification criteria mean they get at least one more piece of evidence to assess each horse.
But there are still curveballs along the way.
