Hoteliers and retailers worry what Brexit might mean for jump racing’s biggest festival
Luc Morel, general manager of The Ivy restaurant in Montpellier, Cheltenham. Photograph: Simon Carswell
“We know how to entertain the Irish. Even us here, we don’t normally do Guinness but we bring in draught Guinness just for this week,” said Morel, who believes there is too much riding on the racing festival for it to be affected by Brexit. A few streets away, a stretch limousine is outside The Beehive pub. Inside, pints are being served to steel punters for a day of racing. Mostly Irish accents can be heard.“We have had long-standing Irish guys coming to us for the past 20, 25, 30 years,” says manager Richard Shakeshaft. “If they can’t get the Irish horses over, the Irish won’t follow them. That would be a worry. It would be close to 50 per cent of our business.
“There is too much money on the line,” says his friend Martin Kilbride, optimistic that Brexit-related checks will not halt the March exodus of Irish jump horses. “There will be some way the horses will come.”Ireland’s love-affair with Cheltenham, means, arguably, that it is the English town that knows the Irish best. Locals certainly think so. “We’d miss them; we love the Irish,” said local woman Lynn Lewis, stopping on the Promenade.
“That would take away the magic story of the man with the 20 horses having his winner at Cheltenham. That might be just taken away, which would be very sad,” says Burke, who has ridden the 2011 Cheltenham Queen Mother Champion Chase Sizing Europe and the 2017 Cheltenham Gold Cup-winner Sizing John. “All of us love the Irish because of the craic and because they’re great horsemen,” he said. Borders and bureaucracy would affect not just racing, but breeding, too: “How would we get mares to your top stallions?”
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