First things first. Marchmeans Cheltenham. It starts a bit earlier this year, running from the 12th until the 15th of the month and the timings are great for the local horse racing fans, as the first race each day goes off at 1.30, giving us four great evenings of entertainment. It looks very much like the Irish will dominate proceedings again but we do have Constitution Hill, the long odds-on favourite for the Champion Hurdle and still trying to cement its reputation as one of the greatest of all time. The Gold Cup is the big race on Friday and Willie Mullins sends over Galopin Des Champs, last year’s winner and in blistering form at the moment. It will take a mighty performance from a rival to dethrone either one of them. It will take a mighty performance from a rival to dethrone either one of them.
The Formula 1 season is in
full swing and there are races scheduled throughout the month. They roll into Bahrain on the 2nd, go on to Saudi Arabia on the 9th and then make the long trip to the iconic leg in Australia, which goes off the grid on Sunday the 24th. Some big news about Lewis Hamilton joining Ferrari recently has been rather overshadowed by the row surrounding Christian Horner over some inappropriate behaviour, which continues to rumble on and the investigation continues.
The Premier League has four full match days in March, with a break coming on the weekend of the 23rd-24th. With due respect to Arsenal, who still have a major chance of lifting the title, the fixture that really catches the eye is the visit of Manchester City to Anfield on the 10th. It would be unfair to describe the match as a title decider as every game is vital at this stage but a victory would deal a huge psychological blow to the losing team. At time of writing Manchester City are on their usual end of season run and Liverpool are plagued by injuries and I feel a victory for City would be a serious message to their opponents. We shall see.
The six Nations concludes on the 10th with a tremendous double bill which starts with the visit of the French to Wales at 10pm local time and then we go straight into the last match of the tournament, between England and Ireland at Twickenham, a great day of sport for rugby fans everywhere.
That’s the major events in March, we’ll take a good look at the first golf major of the season in April, the Masters, in our column next month, along with the Champions League and the Grand National. Happy viewing everyone.