root and branch, not tinkering, is what is required.

​The Racing Post recently ran a series of articles detailing the decline of British Racing against the success stories of horse racing countries around the world. Rather dramatically, though perhaps appropriately, they labelled the series ‘1-Year To Save British Horse Racing’. If anyone at the B.H.A. read the 3 reports, it should have served as a kick-up-the-pants. What the series lacked was a follow-up interview with Julie Harrington to seek out her response to what qualified as an in-your-face criticism of her, her predecessors and the B.H.A. as overseer to the welfare of horse racing in this country.
As an aside, I sometimes wonder if it is stipulated in the contracts of those who head-up the British Horse-Racing Authority that they learn to play the violin Nero-style, not with the gusto of a barn dance.
Beyond the three well-executed articles, what really hit home on the crisis in British racing was the article by Lewis Porteous on Tom George’s business plan for surviving the present crisis – the decline is at least 40-years in the making – by training in this country and having a satellite yard in France with his son Noel as the licence-holder. It would not surprise me if Tom George is not joined in such a venture by other British and Irish trainers in order to take advantage of the lucrative prize-money on offer across the channel.
Tom George summed up the chasm of mindset between the two countries when he said about French racing. ‘It’s all geared toward the horse rather than the betting.’
To quote facts from the article, in France they have races, for example, for horses that have not won £5,000 in prize-money in the previous year. In Britain, I suggest, with so many low-grade horses in training, there could be races for horses that have not won £5.000 in their careers. Obviously, such races as I suggest would be low-grade but the system would allow owners of such horses a fighting chance to either make money from the sport or at least break-even. In France, horses can keep competing in such races until they have won £5,000, then they progress into races for horses that have not won prize-money to the value of £10,000. 
This simple, no-nonsense, approach to race-planning has the advantage of allowing opportunities for horses on the slide or that are in the grip of the handicapper. 
To adopt a similar style of race conditions in Britain will require a wholesale   root and branch change in thinking by racecourses and the B.H.A. and I would put forward the proposal that this summer – there is no point delaying matters, the situation in this country is too dire – a month is set aside, both for National Hunt and the smaller flat meetings, to trial races conditioned by prize-money won in both the career of a horse and in the previous twelve-months.
Where we cannot follow the French example on how to fund and support horse racing is the annual travel allowance given to each horse in training. It is a splendid incentive, though with racing’s and national finances as they are at present, it can only be an aspiration for further down the line. In saying that, I do not advocate tinkering and delaying. Big steps must be taken in the immediate future; the big dreams, though, must wait until someone comes up with a solid, long-lasting, solution to the festering sores of British racing represented by diabolically low prize-money and lack of investment generally.
Six and seven-figure prize funds for major races at festival race-meetings, especially in regards of the flat, support the breeding industry to a far greater extent than the racing industry. Races worth £5,000 and conditioned to only allow horses that have not won the same figure, either in life or the previous year, would support those who earn their wages in racing stables and through racing stables. You cannot build from the top-down, as seems to be the policy of racing’s administrators. The taller, the heavier, the building, the better and sounder the foundations must be. Horse racing in Britain is shuddering, in the main, because its foundations have been allowed to crumble while the top-stories of the sport have been gifted the weight of heavier prize-money.
The time for tinkering is long gone. Now is the time for dynamism. Not surveys and steering groups and talking to stakeholders in the style of making a plan for a wedding reception. In France, and this cannot be repeated enough times, the sport is run not for betting but for horses, and if it is run for horses it is run for people, those who earn their wages from horses and the sport. To be succinct, it is run on solid foundations. Whereas, sadly, the sport in Britain is run on the shifting sands of the whims of its ‘stakeholders’!