The 2020 Cheltenham Gold Cup Festival sponsored by Magners was an event full of dramatic racing highs and lows, but the winner off the track was Cotswold Grey - awarded Best Stand Display at the Festival Shopping Village.
In a competitive race with 68 runners, number 41 Cotswold Grey stood out from the crowd for its originality and flair. It edged ahead of stylish rivals offering feather-trimmed hats, designer boots and couture country clothing to secure a comfortable victory.
Designed by Natalie Fisher with Colette Saunders around a Spring theme, the stand featured an eclectic collection of furniture, home decor and art given a stylish seasonal twist with a beautiful range of silk plants and flowers. Stand-out items included a cheeky cast-bronze chimpanzee, beautiful Kali mirrors with ornate painted frames and a driftwood horse garden sculpture.
‘Our stand was a little bit different,’ Colette explained. ‘It looked very pretty and a bit of a contrast to the other stands – Cotswold Grey is one of a kind. It felt a little quieter than usual, but we did really well on cashmere scarves and throws – and two men spent a fortune on silk flowers for their wives after a big win!’
The win was a positive at an event overshadowed by fears of the looming coronavirus crisis: Cheltenham 2020 will be forever marked out as the last major public sporting event before the UK lock-down. Numbers attending were down approximately ten percent, although Gold Cup day itself attracted 68,859 visitors (only 2,734 down on 2019), bringing the total across all four days to just over a quarter of a million people.
Those that did brave it were treated to a fantastic week of racing with many memorable moments. Of the highs and lows, the nadir must surely have been on the final day in the JCB Triumph Hurdle when 5-2 favourite Goshen thundered towards victory ten lengths clear only to clip the final fence, unseating his rider Jamie Moore who was thrown when the horse landed and trod on its own foot. The crowning glory came the same day in the titular Gold Cup race. In a nail-biting finish, Al Boum Photo, ridden by Paul Townend and trained by Willie Mullins, won by a neck to take the cup for the second year in a row.
Cotswold Grey’s prize, in addition to the gold plaque on display at the flagship store in Moreton in Marsh, is an extra three metres of space at the Festival Shopping Village next year so we can display an even bigger range of furniture and homewares at the 2021 Festival.
‘The Cheltenham Festival is a fantastic PR opportunity for Cotswold Grey to network with people from England, Ireland and all over the world’, says Natalie Fisher. ‘We have done the event for four years now and it’s lovely to see returning customers come back to buy more for their homes. There’s a great atmosphere and camaraderie with other stallholders and we are popular because we are the only home interiors stand, which makes us unique’.
See more photographs here!
