at last, the right people are giving the right advice.

​The best aspect to come out of the weekend’s racing was the quote by Ger Lyons, replicated, I am pleased to report, by other racing folk in recent weeks, by the excellent David Jennings in Sunday’s Racing Post (Sept 12th). ‘As I keep saying to anybody who will listen to me, stop worrying about the people who don’t want to come. Worry about the people who are here. The people outside will see how much we’re all enjoying it. Eventually the penny will drop and they’ll want to join us.”
This is very much the right attitude, not that nothing should be done to encourage new people to race meetings. ‘The Racing League’ will not achieve greater racecourse attendance as the teams involved are all pretend and not actual real-life associations people can attach themselves to. The participants may enjoy the greater levels of prize money, though it begs the question why similar levels couldn’t be achieved for the same meetings without the racing league involvement. The same can be said about the Sky Bet Sunday Series.
As I have said many times; if you want to drive new people to the racecourse, the sport should fund free coach trips from local towns and cities to local racecourses and then to have people on-course to welcome and guide them through ‘a day at the races’. 
There is no silver bullet for growing the appeal of horse racing to the general public, especially as there is so much variety of sporting entertainment these days. ‘From small acorns do great oak trees grow’ should be the motto. And those people who think what we call ‘class racing’ will attract the non-race goer, that is a fallacy. If that were true point-to-points would have no future. Mainly old horses, no great quality of jockeyship, a race environment with practically no facilities and no hiding place from the elements, yet point-to-points thrive.
A day at Bath, Redcar, Fontwell or Hexham, any racecourse, in the fresh air, the sun, hopefully, shining, should be an appealing venue for a family day out. What people come for, in my opinion, is to see the horses and to, crossed fingers, win some money off the bookmakers. Slowly, racecourses are getting there. Creches, swings and roundabouts for the kids, market stalls for shoppers, entertainment outside of the racing, picnic areas. Horse racing should not be packaged as a betting medium. The racecourse has to be a fun-for-all-ages venue. The quality of horse will be lost on the majority. A seller that has a three-way finish is just as great a race as the Derby or Cheltenham Gold Cup to those not 100% invested in the sport. There is too much upper-crust snobbishness in the folds of racing. The sport has to be more inclusive, with all aspects exclusivity consigned to the waste bin.
Anyone new to the sport at Doncaster on Saturday or Leopardstown over the weekend must have been enthused by the atmosphere created by top-quality horses running for big prizes deeply coveted by owner, trainer and stable staff alike and will undoubtedly have noticed the difference over a day at Bath or Sligo but will that stop them going to local venues in the future? At the end of the day a horse is a horse, a horse race is a horse race. It is our perception that makes the difference.
Racing professionals will not like me saying it and will doubtless argue heatedly against me but what puts a lot of people off going racing, or even watching it on television, is the over-use or use of the whip. I do not live in a racing environment. To be a racing enthusiast is an odd interest in the eyes of the many when football, rugby, cricket or golf is there to be enjoyed. To be of the opinion that to ban the whip is to give in to an ignorant crowd that will never accept the sport anyway is to enforce the critic’s belief that horse racing is all about winning at all costs. It is a false perception that must be remedied or else our future might be as limited as hare coursing.
Study racing from the nineteen-fifties, sixties and even seventies. Look at the whip actions of the time. Lester winning the Derby on The Minstrel. Compared to jockeys of today, the jockeys of yesteryear look ugly, ferocious, even. Not all but some, as anything went in those times. Today, it cannot be all about winning. Though, of course, it can and will be. It is the style of winning that must change. The jockey must adapt to the times we live in. 
Some horses will not win simply because the jockey will not be able to wield the whip. Other horses, though, will benefit from any stringent new rules as they will not be soured by the eight cracks of the whip presently deemed perfectly acceptable to everyone except those who might yet get the sport banned. There is a bigger picture here, and, yes, flat jockeys may have to lengthen their stirrup irons and learn a new art. But they will adapt, as they always have, and the true horseman will continue to be at the top of the game.