FOR A MOMENT, LET'S FORGET ABOUT CHELTENHAM.

​Next week will be soon enough to get dizzy with excitement for the coming of the greatest race-meeting in the whole damn world. 13 days to go, apparently. Time a’plenty for injury to scupper banker bets. My banker, Dynamite Dollars has already suffered at the hands of cruel misfortune. If you are interested, Apples’ Jade is my new banker. For those that mock my prowess as a tipster, Presenting Percy was my banker last year and he won.
So putting Cheltenham aside for the time being, let me concentrate on the minor surgery I would like to inflict on our sport and the calendar in particular.
Firstly, I wish the brains at the British Racing Authority would invest, if nothing else, some thought, to coming up with a revenue stream to fund the one thing everyone in the sport agrees upon we are desperately in need of – better prize-money, preferably at the lower levels of the sport. Some form of Tote monopoly, perhaps. We live in a digital world, how difficult can it be?
Away from the dreamland of wishful thinking, I would like to see the B.H.A. outlaw having two racecourses within fifty miles of each other holding meetings at the same time on the same day. In truth, I would like to return to simpler times when there was one meeting in the north per day, one in the south and one in the middle of the country. I don’t have much of a problem, for example, when Southwell has a meeting in the afternoon and Wolverhampton in the evening as that arrangement makes life for jockeys somewhat easier but when they overlap it strikes me as plain irresponsible race-planning.
I would like the flat jockeys’ championship to start in March and end on the last day of the flat. At the moment the situation is a farce, with the jockey riding the most winners during the flat season not necessarily being awarded the title of champion jockey. ‘Champions Day’ may be a marketing success story but in reality its proximity to the Arc and Breeders Cup makes it rare for a champion racehorse to turn-up and if the ‘champions’ in ‘Champions Day’ refers to human athletes rather than the equine athletes then the day would be better staged at Doncaster on the last day of the season.
I would like to see a major race restricted to professional female jockeys.
For the sake of fairness, if nothing else, I would like to have six months of the year dedicated to jump racing and six months to the flat. Not six-month seasons, just all the major races run during that time period.
If I had my way the flat would start at Doncaster with six kick-ass handicaps, headed by the Lincoln, the six races forming a bet with a million-pound prize-fund.
I have suggested the next idea in the past and I am not too ashamed to repeat it here: replacing the St.Leger as the final leg of the Triple Crown (and as a classic) and replacing it with the Eclipse and restricting the race to three-year-olds. I would make the St.Leger, a race for three-year-olds and upwards and run at its traditional distance, the richest race in the British calendar.
As far as the jumps are concerned, I would revert what used to be the Mackeson to 2-miles but keep the race originally known as the Massey-Ferguson at its present distance. I would replace the race originally known as the Whitbread with a 2-mile four-furlong chase, with a valuable 2-mile handicap as a supporting race. Too many long-distance chases at the end of the season which can only dilute the quality and quantity of horses available to do all of them justice.
I would remove the Betfair Chase from the million-pound challenge and replace it with the race formerly known as the Hennessey to try to persuade trainers to run the better chasers in such races so we can better determine a contemporary and historical order of merit. In the past all the great chasers, and hurdlers for that matters, routinely ran in handicaps. I would like to return to those days. Would it kill Altior, for example, to give away weight to lesser horses once in a while? Yes, it might kill his trainer but that would only prove trainers in past decades were made of sterner stuff to their snowflake contemporaries of today.
I would instigate a similar million-pound challenge for hurdlers to encourage more horses to come from the flat to the jumping side of the sport. The Fighting Fifth, the race formerly known as the Schweppes and of course the Champion Hurdle would comprise the three qualifying races.
I would add a fifth day to the Cheltenham Festival. A ‘Heath or Safety-Net Day’ in case one of the proper Festival days is lost to the weather, a day also for trying out races that might one day be incorporated into the Festival proper.
Given the importance of staying chases to the jumps programme, I believe there is a glaring need for a 4-mile Championship Chase. There is a championship race for all other divisions, perhaps not the 2-mile 4-furlong hurdlers, but not for the division that is the heartland of the sport.
I would give all the major National Hunt races proper names, for continuity and historical accuracy if nothing else. ‘Registered As’ in the race title is pointless if the staying chase at the end of the season remains in peoples minds ‘The Whitbread’. How can anyone in the future write an historical account of such a race when it has a different sponsor every second year. It’s demeaning to the sport to allow sponsors to kidnap a race important to the sport just for commercial self-interest.
And finally, for now, there should be an award for the training performance of the year, both for flat and jumps trainers. It is yet another glaring omission.