Lastly, one other thing that I wanted to say, if you have never been to Cheltenham, then you must go! I think I had an account with Billy's back then and I've never had a better day's punting at Cheltenham, culminating with a good bet on Jim Old's Sir Talbot in the County Hurdle.

In 1969 and 1970 he served as the president of the BP Oil Corporation, the company's American subsidiary, and negotiated its merger with Standard Oil of Ohio. Upon the creation of British Petroleum in 1954, he was sent to Canada to set up the company's subsidiary, BP Canada, in part because of his experience on the general staff in the Canadian Army. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. 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 . Describe all the feelings the Festival bound jockeys, trainers and owners experience as this week approaches?There’s a very good reason that that cheer goes up when the tapes go up; because people have been waiting for the start of the meeting or a particular race or the Gold Cup and they love it. I also knew his father Paddy Mullins who trained Dawn Run - Dawn Run having been responsible for running the greatest race I’ve ever seen when she won the Gold Cup and rallying from beaten. The smoke drifted across all these tweedy folk in the box next to us and I think they were all out of their heads by the end of the day! One of them said I had fulfilled their lifetime ambition as he went into his local pub in Shipston on Stour that night which was full of people from Cheltenham and he bought everyone in the pub a drink because he had backed it at 250/1! From 1922 to 1927 he attended Edinburgh Academy, and from 1927 to 1932 attended Marlborough College.

I imagine either Willie Mullins or Gordon Elliott which is hardly big news, I mean Gordon is running 60 horses and Willie will probably have 50. Colonel Sir Alastair Frederick Down OBE MC TD (23 July 1914 – 22 October 2004) was a Scottish army officer, accountant, and oilman. Finance is provided by PayPal Credit (a trading name of PayPal UK Ltd, Whittaker House, Whittaker Avenue, Richmond-Upon-Thames, Surrey, United Kingdom, TW9 1EH). Following his recovery, he was posted to the general staff of the British Eighth Army in North Africa and Italy, and then transferred to the staff of the First Canadian Army in the Netherlands. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the Champion Hurdle or one of the handicaps because the handicaps are contested with a ferocity and usually at a pace that is kind of frightening to watch - and they just go off like hell out of the night; so much so, that we’ve had changes in the field sizes in recent years.His knowledge of racing comes from a deep love of the sport, both the equine and human counterparts.