But it is not a question of retiring from the sport, and I will be going to the British trials in April to try and get into the team.”. They were scrubbing and brushing furiously outside Corbiere’s old box as light snow fell on Mark Pitman’s yard in Upper Lambourn yesterday. All that was needed was a piece of carpet at Weathercock House under which to sweep racing’s troubles. They were scrubbing and brushing furiously outside Corbiere’s old box as light snow fell on Mark Pitman’s yard in Upper Lambourn yesterday.

All that was needed was a piece of carpet at Weathercock House under which to sweep racing’s troubles.
National Hunt racing’s premier community finds itself in a strange limbo land as the sport’s raison d’etre, the Cheltenham Festival, hangs in the balance. Two days into racing’s self-imposed suspension, the business of exercising, grooming and mucking out equine athletes was going on as usual yesterday in the Valley Of The Racehorse.Crackling anticipation usually hangs in the vale at this time of the season, but, this year, there is just a single large cloud, that of doubt. Work is done functionally, without merriment, heads down and no chatter as hopes for the Festival are confined to the thoughts. But perhaps the most notable sound missing from the village is the cough of the horsebox engine.Upper Lambourn is playing its part in pointing a bayonet at the charging foot-and-mouth. At the entrance to each yard a thin yellow line of disinfected straw attempts to keep out the wandering disease. It is, of course, window dressing (foot-and-mouth can also be transmitted on the winds), but to do something unites what is already a tight community.Community applies to racing like no other sport. Not only do they work together, the protagonists all seem to live together as well.

Glories and disappointments are shared and Upper Lambourn is the capital.Today should have been the media scrum at Nicky Henderson’s Seven Barrows establishment, just four miles outside Lambourn. It should have been the day when he told us about Landing Light in the Champion Hurdle, Marlborough in the Gold Cup and Tiutchev coming to the boil for the Queen Mother Champion Chase. Horses, however, are horses which do not simmer well, and the request now is for a quick resolution to Cheltenham’s viability.Yesterday’s announcement that the Irish would not be turning up at Prestbury Park even if the meeting goes ahead has provided yet another tug to the emotions. The people of Upper Lambourn would like to be racing now, but understand their farming kinsmen who seek to eliminate the travelling of any livestock.

They would like to win at the Festival, but understand it would be a hollow victory in the absence of the Irish. On average, only 15 per cent of the contestants at the base of Cleeve Hill emanate from Ireland, but this 15 per cent forms largely the most fancied and heavily-backed horses of the three days.”From a totally selfish point of view you could argue that it would make my job easier,” Mark Pitman said in the room next to his office yesterday, “but it wouldn’t be the same as last year when Monsignor won the Royal & SunAlliance Novices’ hurdle. He was rightly crowned as the outstanding novice of the year.”If either Run For Paddy or Sheer Genius wins it this year, fantastic as that would be, there would be a feeling of anticlimax. And the winner of the Champion Hurdle could not really feel like the real champion because there was no Istabraq. If you have the Festival and you don’t have the Irish, it just wouldn’t be the real Festival.”In the tack room, Murty McGrath, the head lad, went about his work, keeping up the spirits of the Weathercock House team, keeping up his own. Racing is an activity permanently handcuffed to misfortune and each yard is not short on stoics.