Cheltenham Races 2012 : The Golden Pheasant : Cotswold Hotel and Restaurant in Burford

The Cheltenham Festival is one of sport’s greatest extravaganzas and in 2011 the country will once again be swept up by horse racing passion as people everywhere prepare to set out on an unrivalled path of excitement.

The races will last four days and the course is anticipating receiving over 200,000 spectators from all over the world and it is thought that more than £500 million will be gambled throughout the week.

The greatest jumping horses in the world will all be returning to the Festival to see if they can win their place in the record books.

Racing at Cheltenham dates back nearly 200 years to 1815 when the first meeting was held on Nottingham Hill with the first races on Cleeve Hill taking place in August 1818.

Racing’s popularity soared over the next decade with crowds of 30,000 visiting the course for its annual two day July meeting featuring the Gold Cup. Spectre was the first horse to win the Gold Cup - then a three-mile Flat race.

In 1829, Cheltenham’s Parish Priest, Reverend Francis Close, preached the evils of horse racing and aroused such strong feeling amongst his congregation that the race meeting in 1830 was disrupted. Before the following year’s meeting the grandstand was burnt to the ground!

To overcome this violent opposition the course was moved to Prestbury Park, its current venue, in 1831. Steeple chasing became established in nearby Andoversford from 1834 and was first staged at Prestbury Park in 1898. Since 1831, the venue has grown from 'three fields' for flat racing into a 500 acre site that has become the home of National Hunt racing.