equality of importance is vital for the sport to survive and thrive.

​For horse racing to not only survive but to have the opportunity to thrive every sector of the sport must be offered support. The sport needs Cartmel, Hexham and Taunton every bit as much as it needs Ascot, Cheltenham and Aintree. Equally, every licenced jockey, be he or she amateur, apprentice or termed journeyman, should be allowed the opportunity to either make their mark or to at least earn a fair living while a jockey.
I have written about setting in train a programme throughout the season, flat and National Hunt, that has a race a day, at the very least, (not every meeting, just a race somewhere in the country) restricted to jockeys who up to that week had not ridden a set number of winners in the previous 12-months. I will not labour the point but I do not understand why the Professional Jockeys Association are not more pro-active on an issue which can only increase the earning potential of the majority of its members.
Every racecourse should be encouraged to have a signature race, with funding provided to ensure the survival of such races when sponsors drop-out. The race programme should also ensure every racecourse has at least one Saturday or Sunday race-day or a meeting during a bank holiday to allow racecourses an opportunity of a boost in finance.
I would go as far as to suggest there should be races occasionally in the race programme for trainers with less than thirty-horses and for owners with only one horse in training.
Where the greatest investment should be, though, and the B.H.A. and others should not sit back and leave this to trainers, is acquiring new owners into the sport. Although I continue to maintain that horse racing is, at all levels, a working-class sport, to survive and to thrive the sport must continue to attract people with the excess wealth to invest in thoroughbreds. The big money races have to keep pace with the prizes on offer around the world. The major festivals, flat and National Hunt, should be marketed and promoted in a similar way to Hollywood movies are thrust into the limelight of publicity. The people who invest millions in buying or breeding racehorses to race must have the incentives to continue.
Yet where the most effective push for owners needs to be is in syndicates. Ordinary working people, from the shop-floor to management, will play sports or go to watch sport without any thought of reward but simply for the joy of it. These people are a reservoir of possibility.
For the majority of our sport’s history, the ruling body, the Jockey Club, would not allow ‘just anybody’ to be involved in racehorse ownership. Times have changed. The syndicate can be the game-changer. In Australia, a country where horse racing seems to be thriving, syndicates play a huge part in their success. Syndicates not just own handicappers but the very top horses. And not just twelve or twenty to a syndicate but hundreds upon hundreds involved in a single horse. For the cost of a night in a pub, perhaps less, a man or woman can own a share in a horse good enough to run in a classic or Melbourne Cup. Marketed right, with a sense of purpose, this is the survive and thrive course of action required here.
I can envisage, once the present nonsense is out of the way, companies and businesses offering shares in a racehorse as a way of building team camaraderie, with stable visits, free racecourse attendance, the lure of Epsom, Ascot or Cheltenham on the horizon. And it should become routine for there to be races restricted to syndicate-owned horses, with several big pots throughout the season to keep syndication in the limelight.
In the short-term, syndicate-only races may produce non-competitive and small field races but we must live with the small acorns ethos to allow the idea to flourish. The sport has to evolve. We cling to the public perception of the sport being the playground of the rich and idle, the nobility and the aristocrat, when in truth the opposite is true. This sport is my sport every bit as much as it belongs to the high society of Jockey Club members. What is required now is for the B.H.A. to roll-up their sleeves, stop hiding itself away and actually display a high level of leadership. If the B.H.A. cannot or will not accept the challenge, to reform its constitution, if you like, and allow itself to lead from the front, it has to go, to be replaced by a working-class type of Jockey Club.
Everyone who works within the industry or who supports the industry deserves an even-break.