There are few sounds in sport like the Cheltenham roar, but future Festival crowds will have to go some to match the one that will echo around the Cotswolds at half-past-one tomorrow afternoon.
A year on from a uniquely sterile Festival, normal service will not merely resume but be turbocharged by a sense of relief and reunion with this magical place as the runners set off in a fittingly high-class Supreme Novices’ Hurdle in the shadow of Cleeve Hill.
The Greatest Show on Turf accolades still sheepishly attributed to what was merely elite performance in front of empty stalls 12 months ago will be validated once more and the so-called Olympics of National Hunt racing will be underway, free from the rules and restrictions that so detracted from the real ones in Tokyo and Beijing.
The picture is a pretty one, is it not? The caveat, of course, is that the racing itself must now deliver.
Concern has been building through recent seasons and, in particular, this one, that Cheltenham might have become too big for the good of the sport, the focus put on the Festival by trainers, owners and fans alike being to the detriment of the rest of the Jumps season. Too many races, the grumble goes, are viewed through the prism of what they might mean come March, too many horses campaigned conservatively with only the big day in mind.
The Olympics, after all, are a quadrennial occurrence. Cheltenham dominates every National Hunt cycle.
But whichever side of the argument you come down on, however tedious, saturated and overblown the elongated build-up might at times feel as it drags on, when the Festival finally swings around the anticipation, excitement and intrigue is all the grander for it.
And there is intrigue by the bucketload. Last year’s meeting set an unwanted new record, with seven of the 28 races starting with an odds-on favourite, hardly a healthy state of affairs even if only three of them went on to win.
At the time of writing, there are just four at this year’s Festival and one of those - Shishkin in the Champion Chase - has a price that says plenty about his freakish ability, but belies the competitiveness of the field.
His Clarence House epic against Energumene earlier in the season both whet the appetite and set the standard ahead of round two, which throws Chacun Pour Soi into the mix for what could be the race of the week.
The weight of public affection for Tiger Roll could well see him punted in to add to the list of odds-on fancies in the Cross Country, though a financial interest is hardly needed to get behind the dual Grand National hero on the final outing of his career.
The same can be said of Honeysuckle, the warmest favourite of the lot, in Tuesday’s Champion Hurdle as she looks to repeat the victory that kickstarted Rachael Blackmore’s dominance of last year’s meeting, the leading rider’s six winners and subsequent National success meaning she returns to Prestbury Park out on her own as the sport’s human star.
Friday’s Gold Cup remains the main event but it is the unknown of a first meeting between potential superstars Bob Olinger and Galopin Des Champs in the Turners on Thursday that has ignited the most preview night debate. Thankfully, at a time when a bloated programme book makes it easy for the best horses to tiptoe around one another, two sets of game - and bullish - connections have decided to settle it.
That is not to say that the Festival is immune to the issues plaguing racing in Britain in particular, most notably a lack of sufficiently talented horses. Entry levels in the handicaps were at their lowest in a decade and hardly oversubscribed in most of the Grade 1s either, making a mockery of the looming inevitability of a five-day Festival, for all the expansion would only actually add two more races to the card.
Racing can feel an insecure sport at times, in a near-constant state of paranoid introspection and beholden to broader societal shifts that cast increasingly unfavourable views on both gambling and the involvement of animals in sport, both of which are, obviously, essential to its existence.
It is why the sport so values its few genuine days under the positive scrutiny of mainstream interest and why scandals like the Gordon Elliott one a year ago and, to a lesser extent, the protracted Bryony Frost bullying case of the autumn, that drag a semi-underground collective reluctantly out into the daylight for less desirable attention, are considered so damaging.
Blackmore’s genius in front of empty grandstands a year ago helped the sport, reputationally at least, survive.
To borrow the kind of post-pandemic corporate speak that is hardly befitting of what remains an intrinsically rural pursuit, this week is its chance to once again thrive.
