if only i could rule, if but for only one day.

​If, as in my dreams, I became horse racing’s supremo I would instigate the following changes.
1. Every British racecourse would annually have the spotlight shone in its direction either with a three-day festival, as is common in Ireland through the summer months, or a valuable race on a Saturday so that it achieves nationwide television access.
Horse racing should be seen as, and run as, a club where every facet of the whole is regarded as vital to the existence of the sport. Racecourses should not allowed be to founder and close. If for no other reason, especially if located in a city or town, racecourses provide society with a green lung, a no-go barrier to urban sprawl. It eats me up to read biographies where jockeys describe a race they rode in at a racecourse that no longer exists. Manchester, Derby, Lincoln, Bogside, Wye, Hurst Park. Too much emphasis is placed in boosting attendance at the top racecourses and not enough thought and effort is put to helping to maintain the racecourses at the outposts of our sport. As I have written before, if we could link a local area to its racecourse via a tradition or festival we might make a step forward in making the sport as popular today and into the future as it was in the past.
Also, I would stop Friday/ Saturday meetings and have them Saturday and Sunday. Too often, especially in winter, the ground is chewed-up on the first day, leaving the second day, the main event, susceptible to abandonment due to frost. Switching to Saturday/Sunday fixtures would also improve the Sunday fare for the punter.
2. A pet subject with me, so I will not expand too much on it, is the way journeyman jockeys are given little opportunity to demonstrate their skills except what they can forge for themselves. I have long argued that it would cost the sport not a single penny to help these men and women who like all of us have bills to pay and food to put into the mouths of their families. Two or three races a week restricted to non-claiming jockeys who have not ridden, as an example, twenty winners during the previous twelve months, is all that it would take to give a helping hand to people the sport can ill afford to lose. These men and women when they stop being jockeys can easily be enticed to leave the industry for a career in the outside world. There is a skills and manpower deficit in this sport and the powers-that-be do damn all to help people who though they may never go on to be a James Doyle or Aidan Coleman possess skills and knowledge that make them invaluable to trainers and the sport.
3. I would do away with the nonsense way the flat jockeys’ championship is decided. Sylvestre de Sousa is a worthy champion but it is highly unlikely that he will ride the highest number of winners in 2018. To arbitrarily pick two dates in the calendar and say the champion will be decided during that period of the season just so a ‘Champions Day’ can be shoehorned into the racing programme is both dumb and unfair. If you sit with your wife in front of the television on Saturday when de Sousa walks out between an avenue of his colleagues to receive his trophy and she asks ‘has he ridden the most winners this season?’, the answer is not as straightforward as Richard Johnson winning the jump jockeys title. It’s convoluted and stupid and flies in the face of the argument that we should be making the sport easier for outsiders to comprehend.
4. To a howl of protest, I would add a fifth day to the Cheltenham Festival. Think about it, for a moment. When the gales hit Cheltenham a few years ago and the Wednesday was abandoned, Cheltenham had no wriggle room. To run the abandoned races meant squeezing them into the final two days. If Cheltenham had a ‘Heath Day’ on the Saturday, as Ascot used to have on the Saturday after the Royal meeting, any lost day could be held over to the Saturday, with that day’s racing either abandoned or transferred to another course. Also, Cheltenham could trial any proposed new race for future Festivals on this fifth day. It would also allow racing’s broadcasters and public to chew over the week’s racing where it should be chewed over, at Cheltenham. Wriggle-room and reflection. Think on it, howlers of protest.
5. I would instigate, as a matter of urgency, a major flat race restricted to professional female jockeys to be run at Goodwood, Newmarket or Newbury with a first prize of over £100,000. There is a glass ceiling in flat racing that has thus far hardly been cracked let alone shattered. A race such as this would at least get female jockeys on a better class of horse than owners and trainers are presently inclined to put them on.
6. Although I accept the changes that were made to the Grand National course have proved to the sport’s advantage, it curls my lip that journalists and television presenters must delve deep to find any grain of ‘romance’ associated with the winner. Higher quality horses do not necessarily equate to a better tale to be told today and in the future. The days of Tipperary Tim, Foinavon, Jay Trump and Ben Nevis and Grittar are gone for good and that is a matter for debate and sadness. The race will never revert to what it once was, so why not a consolation race for horses that do not make the cut run either on the following Sunday or Monday or perhaps the following Saturday? Keeping the joy of the race alive for another seven days. Jockeys could attempt the ‘National Double’.