From false starts to hotel prices: Racing Post writers with five improvements that can be made to the Cheltenham Festival

1. Time to finally lance the boil of the Mares' Hurdle

The manner in which the Mares' Hurdle continues to detract from the week's championship races is a damning indictment of the authorities' curation of the festival. 

What happened with Lossiemouth isn't new, but maybe the overwhelming furore is and even its most devoted advocates, including Peter Molony of Honeysuckle fame, are finally seeing the light. Molony's suggestion, which is to downgrade the race to a Grade 2 with a significant Grade 1 penalty, is the same one I made 11 years ago after Quevega's final win in the race.

She was a multiple Grade 1 winner who should have been adding depth to the Stayers' Hurdle but instead was able to turn up every year and dispense with inferior rivals off equal terms. It was a joke then and has been all the way through. Remember, Annie Power wouldn't have even run in the 2016 Champion Hurdle in which she sealed her legacy but for Faugheen's defection, and the fact that Lossiemouth and Golden Ace had it as a fallback option completely undermines the ethos of the festival.