Horse racing is a great sport. It is one that it is easy to dip into and out of, you don’t have to watch it all the time to keep up, you don’t have to watch week in week out, you don’t even have to attend regularly to be a fan of the sport. If you follow a football team, it can mean checking news on apps constantly, it can mean reading article after article about them and, for committed fans, it means spending hundreds if not thousands of pounds going up and down the country to follow your team.
With Horse racing you can watch when you want, attend when you want and miss out when you want, and you still will not lose any of the experience or feel as if you are missing out on something essential or important. It really is a fun sport for that reason and the pageantry and pomp and circumstance just add to it. It feels like a bit of a thrown back as far as sport goes with a glamour and a real feeling of uniqueness that just make it that little bit special.
Each year begins quite slowly for big fans of the sport. Of course there are quite interesting early race meetings, but none of them are all that significant. They aren’t really the so-called ‘big ones’ that people really look forward to and build up for during the year. There are certain race meetings that just conjure up the idea of having a special, fun and unique day. They are race meetings which have become part of history and folklore.
There are horses that people remember from their childhood’s, moments that were so special and unique that you never truly forget them. Horses like Red Rum who leave such a deep impression that you will always remember them. Luckily, those events, the ones which turn horses and jockeys from regular competitors into legends, are on the horizon.
March signals the start of this new racing calendar, of the real start of the season. It all really kicks off with Cheltenham Festival on the 13 of March, assuming the weather clears up and the beast from the east takes its leave. The Gold Cup is, of course, the one that everyone wants to watch, however there are plenty more exciting races to be watched in the Cotswolds this year.
A little further down the road but soon enough that we can start to get excited about it, is the Grand National. A race that grips the nation, one that even people who aren’t that bothered by Horse racing will watch. And now, with the Grand National start times having been confirmed, it is the perfect time to start exploring who will be racing and who you should be looking out for on April 12th.
Finally, a fair bit further away, in June of this year, is Ascot. Ascot feels very special because the royal family are in attendance and it has so many different and sophisticated days. It will be one of the biggest Ascot’s ever in 2018 so make sure to put 19th of June in your calendar.
