Lambourn opens its doors to the world An estimated 8,000 people made their way to the Betfair sponsored 22nd annual Lambourn open day to meet their equine heroes which, for the rest of year, are never within touching distance. Despite an advertised opening time of 8.30am a queue began to form at Nicky Henderson's from 7.30am, some visitors having left Manchester at 3.30am, to see his seven Cheltenham Festival winners and last year's Gold Cup winner Long Run. Big crowds were gathered around Sprinter Sacre, jumping's new kid on the block, and Finian's Rainbow, the new Champion Chaser, and through entrance fees and programme sales, Henderson took a staggering £26,000, of which the lion's share will go towards the Lambourn Valley Housing Trust, which owns 20 houses for stable staff in the village. The rest is split between the local air ambulance, which is regularly called out to the gallops, the local school and, this year, the Catholic church which, with so many villagers of Irish extraction, remains one of the pillars of the community. In the afternoon the crowds gathered on a field owned by Bonnie Tyler to watch various events, including a dressage display by Lissa Green - instructed by her six-time Badminton winning mother, Lucinda - riding a thoroughbred which did not make it as a racehorse. Yogi Breisner showed how he gets racehorses thinking about their jumping while jockeys including AP McCoy and John Francome schooled horses over fences. The champions past and present entertained the crowd with very passable impersonations of commentator Luke Harvey from his days as a jockey by riding longer than policemen and "calling a cab" at each obstacle. A regular feature of the entertainments is for local racing celebrities to make fools of themselves. Yesterday this took the form of four teams, one captained by McCoy and another by Francome, riding camels, gymkhana ponies and running in a zorbe (a big plastic ball which you climb inside) relay race. Having been touched off by Harvey, McCoy was unable to count a camel as one of his 3,500 or so winners.