Foot & Mouth threat to Cheltenham

The multi-million pound Cheltenham Festival, the most popular and prestigious meeting in the National Hunt racing calendar, could be under threat because of the foot-and-mouth crisis.

A suspected case of the highly contagious disease is being investigated in Stroud, just 12 miles from the Gloucestershire track.

Although horses are not affected by the disease, they can carry it.

There are just 19 days to go until the three-day meeting, which generates a seven-figure income for the track and attracts sell-out crowds.

But Cheltenham is perilously close to the 10-mile "exclusion area" imposed around the latest unconfirmed outbreak.

An additional threat to the Festival is that many of the horses which compete there come from Ireland, and there were calls today for a ban on movement of livestock between England and the Republic of Ireland because of the disease. The foot-and-mouth scare also poses a more general fear for racing, and could even threaten the Grand National on 7 April.

The last time there was a serious outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in this country, in the winter of 1967-68, racing was banned completely for three months. "Open" greyhound meetings, where dogs travel to various tracks, were also banned.

A racing ban this year would spell disaster for the sport, already massively hit by abandonments during the wettest winter on record.