Pros: Increased revenue generation for town, businesses, and racecourse. Cons: The added filler races would seriously dilute both the quality and stature of the traditional grade one championship races. Two decades later and the ‘pros’ are still happily ‘pro-ing.’ More racing unsurprisingly led to more paying customers, revenue has indeed grown, and all the stakeholders have cashed in. There are unsettling recent indicators that fruit has been squeezed too tightly that the pip may soon be about to squeak. Time will tell. Sadly, the cons are still conning too, and the detrimental impact to racing argument entered a new phase this week. The adjustment to the entry conditions which turned two graded novice chases into handicaps seems to have made an immediate impact. Today’s Brown Advisory Novices' Chase over three miles is a case in point. Normally this race was at the stamina end of a novice series; the Arkle over two miles, Turners over two and a half and the Brown Advisory over three and a bit. If the Turners had not been converted to a handicap, there is little doubt that Ballyburn and even a couple of yesterday’s Arkle starters might have been rerouted there too. So instead of starting at 2-5 to beat three or four place money prospectors tomorrow, Ballyburn lines up later today in a compelling contest against high-quality opposition. How he jumps and stays will shine a bright light on his future Gold Cup prospects. Next up, hopefully. Downgrade the mares' races and get the likes of Lossiemouth back in the Champion Hurdle where they truly belong. Can Skelton get his threepeat? When the Brown Advisory finishes today, the next race up is the Coral Cup. This is an absolute beast of a handicap hurdle and arguably the hardest safe to crack in the whole week. Although Dan Skelton seems to have found the key recently. Skelton has produced the well-supported Langer Dan in top form to win the last two editions despite being out of sorts in his early season races. Skelton got straffed on-line on both occasions with and sadly, some of the bullets were fired from Irish weapons, odd when the successful execution of a successful Cheltenham plot is seen as a national badge of honour here. Langer Dan was subsequently punished by the British handicapper who raised him 19lbs in the ratings, and he’s stayed there despite his usual early season lethargy. This rules him out of an attempted ‘threepeat’ and instead he will take on Grade One horses in the Stayers' Hurdle tomorrow. But Skelton’s heroic feats in the Coral Cup may not yet have ended. He saddles the joint favourite, Be Aware, who hasn’t won on any of his last five outings, but has performed well in defeat, including a good second to Burdett Road at Cheltenham last November. He gets into the race off a competitive rating of 137 and Skelton said in the build-up: “He has come a long way in a year. He was way too fresh when galloping at Huntingdon, but we will have him under control and if he settles, he would have an outstanding chance. For me, he is a live candidate for the Coral Cup.” Confident words from a man who knows how to butter his parsnips. The Champion Chase The Cheltenham Festival is usually referred to as ‘the Olympics of horseracing’ so this afternoon it stages the 100-metre final. Over a trip just short of two miles, the Champion Chase is one of the finest sights of the week. Fast and accurate jumping, seasoned campaigners, talented horses, fearless jockeys, and no room for error and the divil takes the hindmost. Today’s edition is not as strong as some previous years, but it is an intriguing contest and with eight runners, a viable each-way betting option. There is a story behind every one of them. The vastly underrated Solness has asked good fields to ‘catch me if you can’ in two Grade One chases this winter and their answer was, emphatically, ‘we can’t!’ Jonbon is arguably equally unappreciated. He has won 17 of his 20 starts but is often branded as the horse who can’t win big races at Cheltenham or the one that laboured to a 22-length defeat by Constitution Hill when second in the Supreme. In reality he is a lot more than that and a win today would be hugely popular. But not as popular, nor remotely as poignant than if Marine Nationale can hit the line in front today. There were moving tributes yesterday to the brilliance of jockey Michael O’Sullivan and sad remembrance of the goodness of the man so tragically lost. His star first blazed brightly here two years ago when he won the Supreme on Barry Connell’s eight-year-old. It would be fitting if his old friend Marine could do it today. Jonbon can wait till next year. The roof can be raised for him then.