Nobody could recall high winds disrupting the Cheltenham Festival before. Most could not even remember the last time, 30 years ago, when any day was lost to bad weather. But out of the unthinkable abandonment of yesterday’s programme has come an unprecedented feast for those lucky enough to attend on the two remaining days.

After the reluctant decision to abandon at 8.30am, crisis management was required throughout this most exacting of days for the racecourse. Ticketholders will be inconsolable and trainers may be tetchy at the effects of this latest example of extreme weather. However, only the misguidedly irresponsible could claim the decision was wrong. With too many areas vulnerable to damaging gusts, it would have taken only one injury, one potential legal claim, for the whole, happy ethos of this great Festival to be undermined.

Nic Coward, the chief executive of the British Horseracing Authority, was present and fully supportive. “The right decision at the right time,” he said. “They know what they are doing here. It’s sad for those with tickets but this could now become one of those weeks that people always remember.”

A two-day extravaganza of 19 races is launched today by surely the finest jumps card ever staged in the world. Ten races will commence at 12.30pm and a giddy 80 minutes will feature the consecutive running of the Champion Chase, Ryanair Chase and World Hurdle.

Capacity has been increased from 55,000 to its Gold Cup ceiling of 65,000 and almost 15,000 tickets will be available on the gates this morning. This, of course, is scant consolation to those who booked for yesterday, or at least the high proportion of them unable to return. For many, who love this Festival like no other annual event, this was a shockingly unexpected blow for which refunds are no real compensation.

Utterly unexpected to most observers, it was an outcome feared by the racecourse executive since its detailed forecasts for the week arrived. Already reeling from the wind damage on Sunday night, there could be no cavalier complacency, no commercial greed.

Edward Gillespie, the managing director, summed it up when he said: “It’s fair to say our lives changed when that structure in the tented village was blown down on Sunday night. We haven’t encountered conditions like this before and we simply cannot put people at risk.”

In that, he included the jockeys and their horses, for the wind direction had changed so that any debris from the acreages of temporary structures could be blown directly on to the racecourse.

This was a component of the decision-making yesterday morning, when Gillespie and Simon Claisse, the clerk of the course, gathered at 5am and found that the ominous forecast received the previous day had not altered for the better.

“We had been warned to expect winds up to 60mph, at their worst between 9am and 3pm,” Gillespie said. “Once they reach 50mph, most of our temporary structures cannot be occupied. It was a horrible decision but, in some ways, an easy one.”

It was virtually made for them when a gust, just before 7am, “exploded the roof” of a marquee. The tented village was rapidly evacuated of all staff and remained closed until late afternoon, when easing winds allowed the repairs to begin. Yet it was not just this exclusive, largely corporate area that was causing concern but the cheapest enclosure on the course, the Best Mate.

“That area takes 10,000 people and the marquee is probably the biggest bar in the land,” Gillespie said. “That, too, was out of action, which meant 20,000 of our crowd could not be accommodated.”

In the confusion of early morning, even Lord Vestey, the course chairman, was briefly denied admittance. He was there in time for the critical meeting at 8am, when the structural engineers, police and ambulance services spoke with one voice. “Their advice, to a man, was that we could not open the gates and allow people on to the site,” Gillespie said. “We could not guarantee safety in some key areas and, because we regard this as a single environment, we could not consider letting some people in and not others.”

Briefly, the option of extending the meeting to Saturday was considered. Apart from the logistical nightmare of selling tickets and re-employing thousands of staff, it was rejected by the police — not least because they would be deployed at a Cheltenham Town football match half a mile away.

“I’ve been told that option is closed but I’m not necessarily accepting it,” Gillespie said. “I want some negotiating ability just in case we should lose Friday’s card.” Forecasts deem this highly improbable. With freakish weather now almost commonplace, though, nobody was taking it for granted.