Last Saturday morning, Mo Gawdat, former chief business officer at Google, was on the radio explaining his algorithm for happiness, apparently a publishing sensation. Happiness, it seems, is equal to or greater than the events of your life minus your expectations of how life should be.
That was a tricky proposition for the 20,000 of us on the way to Cheltenham Festival’s trials day likely to have a few bets and facing a fiendishly difficult racecard. Trials day is the final opportunity for trainers to test out their best prospects for a desperately prized win at the Festival in March. Could this one stay an extra four furlongs? Can that one cope with Cheltenham’s idiosyncratic undulations? Is my leading owner’s pride and joy just a decent handicapper or has he got that extra touch of class? The true optimists among us no doubt anticipated going home with a thick wallet; the rest expected the usual run of second places when we backed to win and fourths when we had backed each way.
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