Cheltenham’s Style Wednesday rebrand annoys all the right people

Second in the all time festival trainers’ list and currently being forced to watch the increasingly small speck that is Willie Mullins disappearing over the horizon, Nicky Henderson saw his week start extremely badly and go rapidly downhill. Forced to pull Constitution Hill, the defending champion, out of the Champion Hurdle after the horse picked up a chest infection, the malaise that has befallen Henderson’s stable star seems to have swept through his yard like mumps through a kindergarten. On Tuesday, five of his six runners were pulled up and the trainer subsequently withdrew several entries for later in the week, including the high-profile runners Jonbon and Shishkin from the Champion Chase and Gold Cup respectively.

“There shouldn’t be any more withdrawals and the ones who have been declared for Friday are intended to run as they’ve all checked out OK,” said Henderson on Wednesday. “It’s pretty shitty all together but everyone has been very kind and I appreciate it. I’d like to think Sir Gino is our best remaining chance and everything we run should have a chance, but you just can’t guarantee at what level they are going to run.”

While Luccia’s third-place finish in the Champion Hurdle meant all hope was not lost for Henderson, the sight of Jingko Blue failing to finish the Gallagher Novice Hurdle meant many eyes turned to Doddiethegreat, one of two Henderson runners in the bookie benefit that is the Coral Handicap Hurdle.

Named in honour of Doddie Weir, the Scotland rugby international turned campaigner and fundraiser who died from motor neurone disease in 2022, any prize money won by Doddiethegreat was due to be donated to the My Name’5 Doddie Foundation by the horse’s owner, Kenny Alexander. The eight-year-old gelding was among the favourites and prominent in the running until the business end of the race, with hopes high that he might have escaped the lurgy that has descended upon Seven Barrows, but alas it was not meant to be and he finished out of the money in a race won by Langer Dan.

A famously dapper man in his trademark, bespoke tartan suits, Doddie, one suspects, might have approved of the festival’s latest marketing wheeze. While seeming to pass largely unnoticed by the vast majority of racegoers, the decision to rebrand the second day of this year’s festival as “Style Wednesday” certainly seemed to cause a stir in several monotonously predictable quarters.

“Cheltenham goes WOKE!” shrieked a headline on the GB News website, over a piece describing the decision to promote inclusivity by allowing anyone, regardless of gender, to participate in a fashion competition traditionally contested exclusively by women as some sort of unspeakable “downgrade” on an occasion that has not actually been called “Ladies’ Day” since 2018.

The former culture secretary Nadine Dorries concurred with the right-wing news station on which she has long been a staple presence, stating in her Daily Mail column that she presumed this sinister development to be “some sort of woke nod from the Jockey Club to the powerful trans lobby”. This in spite of the fact the festival organisers made no specific mention of transgender folk when announcing their decision to welcome allcomers to this year’s fashion jamboree. Instead, the focus was on affordability and sustainability.

Nicky Henderson in the unsaddling enclosure after his horse Jingko Blue pulled up in the opening race. Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian

“This year we relaunched day two of the festival as Style Wednesday to celebrate ‘fast horses, slow fashion’, encouraging racegoers to make more sustainable fashion choices, showcasing their unique and personal style,” a spokesperson said in a statement that encouraged anyone hoping to bag the first prize to eschew high-end fashion labels in favour of opting for vintage clothing or a judicious rummage around their own wardrobes. Whatever their motivations, festival organisers are to be commended on what is arguably their first recorded instance of acknowledging any hint of a cost-of-living crisis by actively encouraging their patrons to spend less rather than more money on a day out at Prestbury Park.

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As someone who plunged the most recent Tory leadership contest into acrimony by criticising Rishi Sunak for wearing a bespoke suit and Prada loafers with a combined price tag of £4,900, Dorries, one could be forgiven for thinking, might have been more enthused by the prospect of seeing male punters turn up at the festival in comparatively cheap spats, 1920s high-rise trousers, lavender dress shirts and double-breasted topcoats with peaked lapels plundered from a vintage bargain bin. Instead, she chose to call on the Jockey Club “to consider who it is they are now offending”.

All the right people, if her bleating is anything to go by.