a sensible suggestion to allow 'champions day' to be true to its title.

​I have never truly warmed to the concept of Champions’ Day at Ascot. I was not happy when the Champion Stakes was snatched from its spiritual home, Newmarket, and presented to Ascot to allow ‘Champions’ Day a race with the name champion in its title. I still miss the juxtaposition of a great handicap, the Cesarewitch, run on the same day as an important European Group I. Not that I am campaigning for the race to be returned to Newmarket. It is what it is and over the years I have come to accept the transfer.
Because of the timing of Champions’ Day in the race calendar, with the Arc, the Breeders Cup and the newly instigated Irish Champions Day distinctly competing for the same pool of top-class flat horses, there will rarely be a clash of equine titans, a race that determines equine champions be it sprinters, milers, middle-distance horses or stayers. So, it must befall the organisers to crown human champions, all of them.
As it is set-up, only the champion jockey and champion apprentice are crowned on Champions Day, with the result already determined before the big day. If all of the championships were to begin on the day after Champions Day, owners, trainers, female jockeys and the amateur champions could be crowned and celebrated at Ascot.
To me it is bizarre that the jockeys title is determined from one arbitrary date to another, with many top-class races not included, with the Lincoln, November Handicap and the Futurity at Doncaster notable for their exclusion, while the owners and trainers title encompasses every race in the calendar. It makes no sense and only plays in favour of the top jockeys and to the detriment of those jockeys who ride in this country from January to December.
Personally, I would prefer to see two flat championships for all divisions, with all-weather racing separated from the turf, with the jockeys winning the most races on the all-weather crowned all-weather champions, allowing the turf championship to be decided between the Lincoln meeting at Doncaster in March and the November Handicap meeting in November at the same venue, as history has had it since the year dot. If this revolutionary suggestion were to become the rule, the all-weather championship could end at the all-weather championship day in February or March.
The formula, and I use the word ‘formula’ deliberately as I believe the initial idea came from Bernie Eccleston who had a brief flirtation with horse racing, of deciding the jockeys’ championship on two arbitrary dates in the calendar and ditching the historical and more sensible method of using all the races in a flat season, came about wholly because of ‘Champions Day’. We will never return to finishing the championship at Doncaster, of course, and it will be as exacting as pulling teeth without anaesthetic for Ascot, Qipco or the B.H.A. to get on board with the common-sense of ending all championships on the same day. But the idea is now floated and I will keep at least two fingers crossed for the duration in hope of witnessing sensible change in my lifetime.