Cheltenham 2015: Dos and Don’ts for racing’s greatest festival

If experience really is just another name for our mistakes, the following are ten Cheltenham cautions to live by – don'ts rather than do's – from someone very experienced indeed about getting it very wrong at jump racing's greatest festival.

1: Beware of tips. This week will zing with advice but back your own hunch. It's going to be as valid as anyone else's. This may sound counter-intuitive from someone paid to tip but there's no getting away from the logic that any tip, however exclusive or expensive the source, wouldn't be being flogged publicly if it were a reliable source of profit.

Not that most won’t be well-meaning: indeed there was one occasion – and excuse the back-slapping here – when yours truly got the first three up in the Champion Hurdle, a not entirely shabby feat considering the winner was 22-1. But even nostalgia can’t disguise how that was six years ago: it’s just a fortnight since I “napped” a 4-9 favourite in a two-horse race - and it got beat!

If there’s a judgement arse in need of kicking, best for it to be your own.

2: Beware Bookmaker Bull. Since over three quarters of the biggest turnover races of the year are run this week, the air will also zing with the sound of chains desperate to increase that turnover even further.

The result is a blizzard of “morkoting” with so many snappy quotes protesting how bookies are on the run that it might encourage the unwary to actually believe some of it.

Bookies do lose occasionally, but such losses usually balance out in the PR budget with front page headlines full of zeroes flogging how supposedly sorely they’ve been hit. When it comes to this stuff, sieve long and prosper.

3: The Anglo-Irish element to Cheltenham runs deep and is enjoyable in its own way, although waving the tricolour in Gloucestershire will really be "just a bit of fun" when the Union Jack gets waved with similar carefree abandon in Kildare.

But it's fundamentally rubbish. National Hunt racing in Britain and Ireland is two sides of the one saddle. Most of the horses are Irish bred, as are the jockeys. The most powerful owner at the meeting will be the colourful American banker Rich Ricci, hardly some salt-of-the-earth Roscrea Ricci: a winner is a winner wherever it's trained and no green flag can wrap far around enough to disguise that reality.

Don’t get sucked into the flag-waving.

4: Everything is trying for its life this week. Pointing that out inevitably conjures up inaccurate visions of everything being kept in a headlock for the other 51 other weeks of the year which in turn could result in believing that form, especially in the handicaps, is redundant. That isn't so.

Because the quality of the handicaps is so good, and everyone’s aching to run, the weights are constricted so much that to guarantee a place in the field, it requires taking a big gamble on keeping a lot under the bonnet before now. Waiting on a real “lurker” might involve waiting until next week.

5: This festival is Tony McCoy's last so everything is going to get tagged in relation to the legendary jockey: his last Gold Cup, his last Champion Hurdle, his last first race, his last last race: basically the whole Brian O'Driscoll vibe.

Like O’Driscoll, the adulation and attention are justified because this is an individual who has put himself through the physical wringer, and at a scale even O’Driscoll would find mind-boggling.

There is no danger of such a fiercely driven competitor viewing this week with anything other than gimlet-eyed resolution so there’s no percentage for punters in getting caught up in the sentimental molasses that will ooze around McCoy’s every move.

Bookies prey on this stuff the way lions target baby gazelles with three legs.

6: There is no lower life-form in racing than the mug. A mug is someone not in the loop. And since everyone is petrified of being described thus, an awful lot of pretence goes into appearing to know everything.

No one in racing ever admits to being surprised. It’s a fact. Tell someone at a racetrack that Sea The Stars has been cloned and the furtive whisper back will be that they’d heard that already - and the thing jumps like a buck.

So just remember that turning up for a preview night or having a second cousin whose mechanic tunes up Willie Mullins’s horsebox does not make anyone “in”. There are owners paying through the nose who aren’t really “in” either. So its long odds the mug volunteering into your ear is.

7: Beware the after-the-event merchant, the one flashing a winning "Lucky 15" slip in your face. For one thing it's a dumb bet. The gambling industry exists on the back of them. So if one of them miraculously comes off, just ponder how many have been quietly torn up in the past with nothing said.

8: Avoid lists - obviously. They attempt to put a statistical framework on something as unpredictable as an animal's gastric fluctuation. It doesn't matter if something's the right age, weight, shape and descended from Arkle - if it's got a pain in its gut, it's going to run stink.

9: Don't go mad. This is the hardest week of the year to win. Don't forget there's going to be a maiden hurdle at Thurles next week where fifteen of them won't be able to try, a couple won't try and a value 3-1 shot with just one to beat will beg to be backed.

10: If you have any sense, don't miss it. There's nothing better.