sport news ED CHAMBERLIN: Time to revel in a proper Gold Cup on 100th anniversary of big ... trends now

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Selections can wait. The only place to start is the best day of this year’s Festival by far, a day when it felt like people fell in love with Cheltenham again.

I was flat when I left the track on Wednesday and I was not afraid to say so in Thursday’s Mail Sport. I was genuinely concerned the British horses would be pummelled again, but what a glorious fightback it proved to be.

Dan Skelton? Wow. He surged to the top of the British trainers’ championship with his third and fourth winners of the week. I was adamant Grey Dawning would win and that beautiful grey didn’t let us down. But to produce Protektorat to take the Ryanair was something else altogether.

For Sir Alex Ferguson to be involved in the ownership was just perfect. I said on these pages in November that he is racing’s greatest ambassador and the thrill he’ll have got with his great mates, Ged Mason and John Hales, will be off the scale.

Some 40 minutes earlier, the trio had won the Pertemps with Monmiral and I assure you the happiness in the winner’s enclosure was unbridled — matched later by that of Harry Redknapp, whose Shakem Up’Arry passed the post first in the Plate to noisy acclaim.

Ferguson 2 Redknapp 1 —you’ll have seen that scoreline somewhere before.

Then how about popular West County trainer Jeremy Scott getting in on the act with Golden Ace?

This was a proper Cheltenham afternoon; winners shared out, some favourites going in but a sense that everyone had a fighting chance. The previous two days felt too one-sided.

Sport needs competition and this sport will have plenty of that as we reach the crescendo and the main event, the 100th Cheltenham Gold Cup. There are some high-profile absentees but we still have a race for the occasion. This is a proper Gold Cup.

Defending champion Galopin Des Champs sets the

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