he mentioned 4-furlong races, oisin & commentators.

​Jonathan Harding, in the second-part of his look at what other sports have done to please the young with their short attention span and what British horse racing is not doing to grab their short attention span, he mentioned 4-furlong races. I shake my head and plough on. A 4-frlong race is just a furlong short of 5-furlongs, a callow youth having his or her first experience of horse racing will not notice any difference between the two. And when will the call be ‘4-furlongs work, why not 3-furlong races?’ Followed by breeders catering for the craze and further undermining the use for thoroughbreds for anything outside of flat racing.
Unlike golfers, footballers and cricketers, jockeys have very little free time. Unlike the aforementioned sportsman, jockeys regularly fall out of bed long before the cock crows to ride work or school, have time only, if lucky, for a shower and a slice of toast, before driving hundreds of miles to their place of public work, before driving home, mainly in the dark or at least arriving home in the dark. Expecting our top jockeys to promote our sport is, I believe, asking too much. The recently retired Alan Johns, on the other hand, seems bred for the job and the B.H.A. might consider putting him under contract to make media content involving our jockeys.
Rather like athletics, our sport is a pure sport. It is all about whether one horse is faster than another. Outside of the simplicity of the race, the sport is multi-dimensional, with as much to learn as a student studying biology or history. The beauty of horse racing, though, is that a student of the sport need not know the whole to enjoy whichever aspect takes his or her fancy. 
The reason the Racing League has not proved a success is two-fold – one, the teams are made-up nonsense, attracting no true allegiance from spectators and two, at the end of the day it is simply horse-racing, not much different from any other meeting staged that day or any other day. Premier Racing has not worked for the same reasons.
Jonathan Harding was unable to deliver any sparkling ideas to equal the ‘success’ of cricket’s ‘the hundred’. I doubt anyone else will do any better.

Oisin Murphy was fined a staggering £70,000 and banned from driving, the length of that ban, I guess, will be determined by whether he elects to attend a drink driving remedial course.
The driving ban, though no surprise, is concerning as it allows him to drink after racing knowing his chauffeur will be available to drive him home. Surely if as a society we want discourage alcoholics and social drinkers from getting behind the steering wheel would we not be better served if these people had a device placed in their car (or cars) where if alcohol was detected on their breath the car would be impossible to start. The ban may keep Oisin off the road as a driver yet makes it easier for him to drink either after racing or even on the journey home or God forbid! on the way to the races. And it is all very well admitting his guilt and apologising profusely to all and sundry but at some point Oisin is going to have to accept that alcohol and him are never going to have a healthy relationship.

Chris Cook in his column today actually answers a question posed in the Post’s letters section. Mr. Peacock of Northallerton decried the use of Americanisms by British commentators, though Mr.Cook was not wholly in accordance with Mr.Peacock’s views. Firstly, I believe our commentators are the best in the world and I have hardly a word of criticism for any of them. I dislike ‘posy’, should that not be ‘possy’? even if it is the shortened version of ‘position’. Why use a word associated with flowers (a posy of flowers) when position is such an easy word to say? Other than that, I agree with Chris Cook, commentators add flavour to a race, and I remain of the controversial view that every one of our commentators do a better job than the legendary ‘voice of racing’ Peter O’Sullevan, one of the ten greatest racing people of my lifetime.