Cheltenham 12/3/25 - Jimmy, Jimmy

As is the case with festivals, we are on a quick turnaround and it's a case of out of the door at 8am, bet all day, crawl out of the car park, crawl back into digs with takeaway of choice, sort out equipment, cash up, blog and crawl into bed. Not much time for witty repartee so it's a quick canter through the book.

1) Stood Final Demand and The New Lion. Thought we had the jackpot of smash up The Yellow Clay over the last. We were wrong. Max loss in win book halved by decent places.

2) Couldn't get a liability on Ballyburn and we were trying. In retrospect a win for Final Demand rather than The New Lion puts us in a better position here as all the doubles roll on and we win nicely. We don't win nicely. In fact we don't win at all and then we lose after sticking in the most rancid places of the week. We know you think we're wrong losing on these. We don't think we are over time or we wouldn't do it but yes, it stung. Got the place loss back in the without market but that crumb of comfort was covered in mould.

3) Looked a result. Again it wasn't. Anecdotally most books we spoke to were cash down on this one, including us. The roars confirmed this. Most books will back it back to make it a winner. We don't. We are miles back. So many Jimmys....

4) Everyone lost here and everyone thought they'd won. We made the fatal mistake of checking which one of the two was worth the most only to find it was neither. Stumptown defied 20 plus in running and we looked on with incredulity. Horrible. And noisy. And 0-4.

5) Got Jonbon in and finally got a "p" to go with our 4 "l"s. It was the 2nd favourite so, whilst we had an excellent result it's still a little short of a jackpot. Loss reduced but still losing.

6) 4th in out of 20 odd isn't a result as the terrible handicap results continued and another max on Jazzy Matty decimated both cash and morale. I'd argue it may have been the biggest roar of the week.

7) Stood two of the top 3 but not the winner, fortunately, and we ended our day 5-2 down instead of 6-1 but we were still knocked out and didn't even get to extra time and penalties.

We know you think we'd have won. We know you think we're daft/wrong. We look at our historic hedging loss and respectfully disagree. It's a quiet night over the Chinese takeaway nonetheless...

We go again tomorrow. Until then...