This year’s Cheltenham Festival is almost upon on us and, as always, it means so much to so many.

The thrills, the spills, the winners, the losers – they all help to make the four-day extravaganza the greatest jumps spectacle in the world.

One man who has experienced that electric atmosphere first-hand is Allen Webb, a man who rode winners at Prestbury Park back in the day and someone who then became a valet to the jockeys, in so doing helping some of the greatest names in the game take the biggest prizes that the sport has to offer.

These days the 65-year-old, who lives in Bourton-on-the-Hill, near Stow-on-the-Wold, remains very much involved in racing, even though he won’t be at this year’s Festival.

That’s because many of the jockeys lining up at the start will be using saddles that have been designed by Webb, someone who is very well-known in Stow where he has worked for many years.

“We make the lightest racing saddles in the world,” said Webb with understandable pride. “They’re made out of carbon fibre and weigh 11oz, they’re very specialist and last a whole career. About 80 per cent of the current jockeys use them.”

Some stellar names from years gone by have used them too, including former champion jockeys Tony McCoy and Richard Johnson.

Webb, who had a couple of winners at the Festival in the late 70s and early 80s and rode close on 300 winners, knows what he’s doing, of course.

In his day the lightest saddle he used was 3lb and he said of his 11oz saddle: “It means today’s jockeys can have some breakfast!”

And while he says, understandably, he’d far rather be racing himself than looking on from afar, he admits “it gives me a bit of a buzz” when a jockey using one of his saddles wins at Cheltenham.

And given his saddles are so popular, Webb should be getting ‘a buzz’ quite a few times!