good strong roots are essential for a healthy body.

​Without anyone coming out and saying it openly, in the racing community there seems a sense that the B.H.A. are not doing enough to protect the future of our sport. Yes, at this present moment, with the world turned inside out by a plandemic that is the scourge of all humankind, it is a difficult task for anyone to concentrate on what is to come, so distracting is the nonsense that prevails. Yet, as with their forerunners, the Jockey Club, the B.H.A. lack vision, and are too easily led by crackpot ideas whose inventors tout as a kind of rainbow of funding if only others would not insist on pointing out the pitfalls. I refer, of course, to the mad-on-the-face-of-it City Street Racing and the equally madcap Team racing concept.
Understandably, prize money has taken a hit just lately, though I think half-a-million for the Derby winner should be enough considering the stallion fees that will come along as soon as Serpentine, to take this year’s winner as an example, is retired to the stallion barn. The B.H.A. has, seemingly, pushed for larger and larger purses for some of our main races, including handicaps, believing, no doubt, the public’s imagination might be caught by seven-figure prize funds. But that is not where any strategy for growing the sport should be centralised. What is required for long-term growth is strong and sustainable roots; any organisation can only grow and develop from strength at its foundations and in racing that is where the majority of horses and small-time owners operate.
What owners require to keep them within the sport is hope. Racing offers the hope of reward to everyone who participates in the sport be they jockeys, trainers, owners, stable staff. It is why instead of investing six-figure amounts of money in the classics etc, if that money is around it should be invested, in the first instance, in the lower echelon of the sport, at Beverley, Hereford, Nottingham, Newton Abbot etc. The day-to-day fare, the racing that keeps the sport ticking.
For many years now both codes of the sport have become increasingly dominated by a smaller and smaller band of owner and breeder: too much of the pie has gone into the mouths of fewer and fewer people. I am not criticising Godolphin, Qatar, Coolmore, J.P.McManus, Giggingstown etc, they are in many ways the lifeblood of the sport. And, perhaps, though the names are different it has always been the same, the rich and powerful owning the best stallions and mares and employing the best trainers and staff. It’s just that in this modern age, even point-to-points can be dominated by the rich and powerful. The small owner/breeder, seemingly, is being squeezed out of the sport.
Do you remember the day when a permit trainer could train the winner of the Grand National? Think, Grittar. Nowadays permit trainers hardly exist and rarely do they pop up with a runner in a major race. Think, Norton’s Coin. This is where the sport becomes interesting to the general public, when the little man has one over the big brigades.
Of course, syndicates are today’s ‘little men’, and God love them for the variety they bring, but there is even a hierarchy within the world of syndicates, though each and ever one should be applauded and encouraged for bringing fresh blood to the sport.
I have said for years that jockeys should only ride at one meeting a day and as is being proved at the moment this is proving good news to most jockeys, providing, as it does, more opportunity for those jockeys who in other seasons would have to stand aside for a more senior jockey who doubtless needs the fee and winning percentage far less than they do. If this system continues the sport will be far healthier for it.
The same benefit would be felt if a certain number of races a day were restricted to owner/bred horses, horses that cost less than, say, ten-grand as a yearling, for trainers with less than, again say, twenty-five horses in training, more sellers, more maidens for older horses on the flat and over jumps. Cater for the lesser lights so as to offer hope to all of racing’s participants. Over the past few decades, the sport has catered far too much for those who have it all. We should always celebrate the winners of classics, flat and jumps, as well as the big festival meetings, the big spenders, the international owner/breeder, the owner with hundreds of horses in training, provide the apex for the lower reaches to aim at. But equally, perhaps more vitally, this sport above all others, a sport that unites every class in society, must have good strong roots and they are not provided by any of the above but by the man with one mare breeding on a very modest scale, by those with two or three mares who work all the hours to afford to keep those mares and who dream of one day making it (financially) big in the sport.
Something else though goes hand-in-hand with any initiative: horse welfare and how the public perceive our attitudes to the topic. Without public acceptance that we care in all instances in the welfare of the horse, and from birth to death, not just when the horse is racing, no initiative will be worth a heap of beans. To my mind the whip issue has gone on long enough and should be speedily resolved. I have advocated a season-long trial of what I will refer to as ‘whipless races’, with an escalating number of races per day restricted to either one or no hits. If we do not volunteer to go down this road, government, using animal rights legislation, will enforce it upon us whether we care for it or not, and the general public will applaud. 
We really must grow this sport from the foundation up.