Cheltenham is far more entertaining if you replace the horses with inflatable animals

It's the most wonderful time of the year.

While it's a lot of fun and riddled with opportunities to win loads of sweet, sweet cash, there's definitely room for improvement at Cheltenham. I'd like to propose that they introduce a new event in which the horses actually ride the jockeys, testing their agility and also giving them a sense of what it feels like to be taken for a ride. Until such time as this new awesome race comes into effect, the mind wanders. Today's wandering has led me to create the series of (poorly Photoshopped) images below. I'll hold my hands up, they're fake. The jockeys haven't actually decided to ride inflatables, but imagine if they did? Now that's a world I want to live in.

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Ruby Walsh riding Francesca the dinosaur   Lizzie Kelly riding Poppy the blue horsey   Nico de Boinville riding Jonathan the giraffe   Noel Fehily riding Fidelma the flamingo   Harry Skelton riding Cassandra the carrot   Bryan Cooper rides Sparky the shark   Ruby Walsh riding Carl the cat   Barry Geraghty riding William the whale