A personal reflection on the glory of Cheltenham
St Patrick’s Day is a crowded place in the sporting calendar.  The heart of the GAA Club Championship finals at Croke Park, the strength of the final stages of the RBS Six Nations, the promise of a surge to glory in soccer.  For anyone though who has tasted the magical elixir of the Cheltenham Festival, there is only one place to be today, in sprit if not in body.
The Festival creates moments that reach back into history and sear themselves on the memory to warm the future.
I watched Buck House and Dawn Run on television in Ireland as a student in the 1980’s.  Peter O’Sullevan’s memorable commentary still makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up more than a quarter of a century later.

That day I vowed that I would travel to Cheltenham the following year and experience the magic at first hand.
In those days it was a case of travelling by ferry and bus to London and going up and down to the track each day on the train.  The thought of staying nearer was well outside the price range of a student and anyway there were other things to spend the money on.
Cheltenham did not disappoint as a theatre of dreams.  Its setting in the natural amphitheatre of the Cotswolds is as if some higher power had pressed a thumb into the fabric of the earth.
The approach roads today will be thronged with jockeys, horses, trainers, owners, mothers, fathers, sons and daughters from every corner of these islands and every imaginable walk of life.
There will be priests fresh from Rome and travellers far from home that are looking for a final roll of the dice to see if they can pay the deposit on next year’s festival already.
It is a big business now.  The grandstands and facilities from which 70,000 will roar home today’s heroes are bigger and shinier than they were and testament to the power of sport to not only raise the heart but also generate substantial revenues.
Those first trips of mine set me on a path which led to unpaid radio commentary at first, a job with Ladbrokes and eventually a position as PR and Sponsorship Director of the Tote, in charge of the biggest race of the Festival, the Tote Cheltenham Gold Cup.  To find your dream job, and to be paid to help create dreams for future generations, all at the age of 30 was a rare but fully appreciated privilege.
They were glorious days and even now pull at the strings of my heart like nobody should have any reasonable expectation from a means of making a living.
While some business meetings are about targets and infrastructure, mine in those days were about the logistics of getting the Queen Mother from her Royal Box to the winners enclosure; how we might arrange for the finest, bravest jockeys to engage with customers; and how we could build year on year on the wonderful event we were charged with delivering.
Time moved on, Dublin called and the ability today to make connections that will deliver great moments across a range of sports means that I have no regrets.  Indeed the warmth of the memories of those days would heat a furnace.
It is in the smaller moments that Cheltenham comes to life.  I recall standing in the Winners Enclosure after the Festival Bumper with Willie Mullins and his wife Jackie almost 20 years ago, celebrating his win and hearing him calling out to a young lad wearing a Man United jersey and kicking a ball around the parade ring.
On Wednesday that young lad rode back into the same winners enclosure on Back in Focus, trained by his Dad.  Now they can look forward to a picture of them sitting alongside those of the one from a generation earlier when Willie rode to victory on horses trained by his Father Paddy.
These are private moments played out on the big screen and they would only fail to move a heart of stone.
I visited the Mullins home a few years back and walked the stables as Willie cared for a young horse he had high hopes of.  That horse was Hurricane Fly who on Tuesday became the first horse since Comedy of Errors in 1986 to regain a Champion Hurdle crown.
Racing is a glorious game but it is hard.  Davy Russell was due to take the ride today on the Mullins trained Sir Des Champs.  Instead he will watch from hospital having punctured a lung in a fall yesterday.  A decision on who will ride will be made this morning.
Mullins is the most successful Irish trainer ever at the Festival.  His 29 wins include five this year already.  He has yet to win the Gold Cup though.  The great Florida Pearl won twice at the Festival but always found the hill too much in the big one.  He carried my hopes and a few euro on many occasions.
He died last May, meaning this is the first Festival the horse which defined the early part of the Mullins career is not around for.
If Sir Des Champs wins today, mine will be one of tens of thousands of voices hoarse from cheering.  For most who will watch, the most important thing is the bet but for Cheltenham, for the Gold Cup and for the genuine love of the sport this is one occasion when the money and the odds would genuinely be immaterial.
I sincerely hope that Willie Mullins lands the Gold Cup today.  I wish that I was there to guide him by the arm to the podium for a presentation of the small trophy that will reflect the efforts of a lifetime in the sport.
Sport has the great ability to make fools of us all at times, and for us to revel in the journey. For any business looking to make a mark on the consciousness of the public they depend on, there is no greater way of doing so.
I am privileged now to work along side many talented people in a very wide range of great sports, from grassroots to elite, from muddy fields to the Olympic Stadium.
But for ten minutes this afternoon my heart and emotion will be focused only on a corner of a foreign field that is forever Cheltenham.