stalls procedure, mr. nicholson is 100%, why are races allowed to be under 5-furlongs and 2-miles & a query.

​There is a stated aim this flat season to get races off on time. The main problem with this acceptable ambition is the professional pride of stalls handlers who do not like to be beaten by intransigent or downright naughty horses and, if given the time, would try, try again to obtain a 100% win-ratio. 
The problem of late start-times on the flat is very similar to false starts over jumps where the horses line-up outside of loudhailer distance. On the flat, jockeys seem determined to be as far away from the stalls as possible, meaning stalls handlers have further to walk to gather-up the next horse to be loaded. Shorten the area between which the horses gather for loading and the stalls and valuable time will be saved.

Mr. Nicholson of West Bolden, South Tyneside, in the letters’ column of today’s Racing Post, is 100% correct in condemning the non-sensical way winners ridden before the Guineas Meeting are not included in a jockeys total for the championship, as do no winners ridden after Champions Day. It is plain bonkers and jockeys should complain about it.
People annoyingly, at least annoying to me, compare horse racing with Formula 1, even though the former is exciting and the latter 95% boring. Yet the Formula 1 champion is decided upon every race in the calendar, not just a percentage of the races staged. The champion jockey should be the one who rides the most winners from the first race of the season to the last. If the sport must have a trophy presented to a jockey on Champions Day why not present it to the most successful jockey in Group I’s and classics in the intervening 12-months.

My next moan/query is why are some five-furlong races not exactly over 5-furlongs but can be a few yards short of 5-furlongs and why some chases and hurdles are yards short of 2-miles? I always thought the minimum distance for a flat race was 5-furlongs and for National Hunt 2-miles. Perhaps some racecourses get dispensation for one reason or another, though in my opinion they should be made to move the finishing post to ensure every race is run to the minimum distance allowed. It is all too easy to slip from just under 5-furlongs to 4½-furlongs. 

Finally – late-up today as no one told me the clocks went forward last night – the Lincoln and Cambridgeshire designate the origin of those races, even if the Lincoln is staged in Yorkshire these days rather than Lincolnshire. So why do Ireland stage Lincolns and Cambridgeshires. Why do they not name these races after a town, city or county in Ireland? 1-mile handicaps are not all thought-of as Lincolns, so why the necessity for Ireland to name its first valuable mile handicap ‘the Lincoln’?
I also have a problem with regional nationals in Ireland being staged over 3-miles and under as the racing definition of a ‘national’ is or should be ‘a race of 3-miles 4-furlongs or longer’. A national is a race for long-distance staying chasers, not for horses that barely stay 3-miles.