Turf's faith healers

"The worry was that our customers would lose faith with an event that had lost its air of apparent invincibility. But it seems quite the reverse has happened.

"The appetite for racing at Cheltenham, and particularly the Festival, is stronger than ever. People seem more determined than ever to get here."

Also, the management team has been hard at work in trying to improve its communication, making up some lost ground and breaking some anew, during the past six months. The team met with the local farmers' union and hoteliers association, travelled to Ireland to emphasise to travel operators and media the importance of an Irish presence at Cheltenham and, after wrangling over compensation, won round a suspicious annual membership.

Bridge-building success can be measured by a full quota of annual members, the presence of the local farmers' union at this Friday's Countryside day and healthy entries for the Open 2001, not only from Britain but also from Ireland, France and even the Czech Republic.

Advances in customer care have also been made, some in response to cricitism during the foot-and-mouth crisis.

Annual members now have a dedicated phoneline to access information and a twice-annual newsletter, improving the track's direct communication with what McNeile describes as "the bedrock of our business".

Despite the financial blows of last season and cost of maintaining footand-mouth procedures running into tens of thousands of pounds, big increases have been made to the purses of Cheltenham's important, non-Festival highlights such as this Saturday's Thomas Pink Gold Cup, next month's Tripleprint and January's Bula Hurdle.

Paul Weaver, a partner in the Cotswold Grange Hotel that lies within walking distance of the track, also confirmed the good signs.

"Bookings for the Festival next March are just as crazy as ever," he said. "The three or four inquiries we get for it a day will have increased to a dozen by Christmas, but we're booked out years ahead. Demand for this weekend's meeting also just gets bigger and bigger every year.

"It was annoying that the Festival was called off so late, but there's no hard feelings. My only truck is with those hotels round here that didn't return their clients' deposits and pre-payments. We repaid everyone in full, in good faith."

Now the groundwork has been done, all the team want for Christmas is "a clear run all season".