change from worse to better never comes without inconvenience or harsh words.

​It is good for the soul, at least, my soul, to discover the ideas I have put forward for the betterment of the sport are slowly gaining traction. Today at Wolverhampton, for instance, though there have been other race-meetings in the same vein, every race is a rider restricted race, for jockeys who have not ridden more than 30-winners during the previous 12-months. I have banged-on about this subject for decades, believing the sport has a moral duty to give all its participants an opportunity to earn a half-decent living, and by allowing jockeys to earn a living wage, the sport is taking forward steps to protect its integrity. An underpaid jockey, with dependents to support, is more easily corrupted than a jockey who can afford to pay the bills and has enough money to support a happy family life. So, that is a pat on the back for me.
I also believe there should be an aspiration for every meeting to have at least one race worth 5-figures to the winner. Having a race worth £10,000 on every card will not in itself provide the answer to owners leaving the sport and our higher-rated horses being sold to race overseas but it would be a step in the right direction, a signal that the sport is trying. I cannot think that racecourses having to stump-up a further £6,000 per card will break the bank. From little acorns great oaks do grow, so it is said.
Of course, the B.H.A. should have greater aspiration than one race per meeting worth £10,000. No race should be run for less than ten-grand to the winner would be a worthier aspiration. But, well, I refer you back to the little acorns. The B.H.A. is of the opinion that it is possible to grow the sport from the top down. Houses are constructed from the foundations up – I rest my case. If the sport declines to the fate of hare-coursing or even greyhound racing, its re-emergence, if that was to happen, would begin, as it was at the very birth of the sport, with country meetings, local sportsman getting together to breath life back into a sport that was once a lynch-pin of British sporting tradition. Read Chris Pitt’s wonderful book ‘A Long Time Gone’ if you want to study the foundations of horse racing, when the sport was a country pursuit and not a billion-pound world-wide industry. I believe Cartmel and Musselburgh will prove the saving fathers of our sport, not Ascot, Goodwood or Sandown.
To return the ‘good old days’ to horse racing the modern requirements of the sporting public should be mixed with what went on when racecourses were crowded and there was no need to ‘sell’ the major races to the media or the public. The B.H.A. want to play too safe, an impossibility when regulating an activity that is by its very nature dangerous. Protecting the welfare of the horse is of vital importance and the sport should be connected from head to toe with equine charities. Horse racing should be the over-arching protector of all horses in this country, with race-meetings staged on a regular basis to raise funds to support the people and charities that provide the necessary safety-nets.
I remain committed to my ‘health and safety’ unfriendly idea to have a 40-runner Lincoln Handicap started from a barrier, a glimpse into how the every day of horse racing was like pre-starting stalls, a concept, by the way, the Jockey Club, the sport’s rulers and regulators prior to the inception of the B.H.B., now the B.H.A., were totally opposed to.
Of course, as we all know, fewer race-meetings, with less races, would go a long way to improving competitiveness in the sport, though I must warn that at present, with only five or six in a race, the owners we still have are earning more prize-money than if we were to have double the number of horses per race. It is an issue that is not a completely black and white picture. Not by a long chalk.
What British sport requires to help it, if that is at all possible, out of the doldrums, is knowledgeable leadership and a regulatory body with teeth that is prepared to bite. We are too bloody polite in racing. The B.H.A. are crap and Julia Harrington has made not one jot of difference. The sport was going down down when she arrived and it remains going down down on her departure. That is not success, with ‘Premier Races’ the biggest red herring since Jesus walked on water, turned water into wine and did that amazing trick when he fed the masses with loathes and fishes. If only he were around today. As things look today, a miracle is the basic requirement for a doable strategy to survival.