super saturday, i hardly think so & something Alice haynes said.

​Mental state much improved and now taken-off ‘suicide watch’. For no apparent reason I bought a kettle yesterday, which I said I would collect, believing yesterday to be Saturday when it was Friday – no point telling you that as from getting out of bed to retiring for the night you knew it was Friday – on Monday. But as it is now properly Saturday there is no reason why I cannot collect it today. As I said, mental state much improved. Crossed-fingers!

The heterosexual male may think he could watch a parade of nude women for twenty-four hours straight, with, of course, bathroom breaks and trips to the fridge, but he could not; he might leave the t.v. or laptop on but his mind would wander after the first half-hour. Within certain parameters a naked woman is a naked woman is a naked woman. This is why ‘Super Saturday’ has no ‘super’ about it. By three-thirty yawns will outnumber thrills by two-to-one.
There are today eight race-meeting across Britain and Ireland, five in the afternoon and three in the evening, highlighted by the July Cup at Newmarket, with supporting cards at York and Ascot. It is overkill. Far too much for a hot day in July, and at a time when hose-pipe bans are coming into force, and that is a mighty lot of irrigation required to provide ground that nature would like to see as firm with hard patches but will be good or good-to-firm at all eight racecourses. Less is more, a sentiment that even a pervert would agree with.

Something Alice Haynes said to Nick Luck last Sunday has resonated with me all week. I was surprised to hear what she said, believing she would favour the complete opposite. In fact, I thought Alice Haynes to be a font of commonsense and I hope Nick has her back on the cheap-looking sofa soon. In her opinion the flat season starts too early and ends too late. Given my belief that the race programme should be torn-up and re-designed to fit the world we now live-in, with careful thought given to reducing the miles horses, jockeys and trainers must travel in any given week and ensuring that two racecourses within hailing distance or one another do not race on the same day, I can only applaud her radical thinking.
To my mind, the flat and National Hunt should have a core six-month season, the flat from May through to October, N.H. from November through to April, with all the major races run in those chosen six-months. That is not to say there should not be turf flat racing in April or November or no National Hunt in October or May. In fact, I am quite sure that some flat racecourses could stage flat racing in February and December, which would be beneficial to trainers with horses that require soft ground, and I am not advocating there should be no ‘summer jumping’. But why not ‘winter flat’?
But the flat season should have a major season opener on May 1st, though not the Lincoln as that could be held in the ‘off-season’ in April. April could be a period of ‘classic trials for the first four classics. Given these races are preparation races for the season ahead, I see no reason why they should have a prize-fund above £20,000 or be considered group races. They are a means to an end, that is all.
The Guineas would herald the start of the flat season proper with the two classics run as close to May 1st as possible. The Derby and Oaks in the first week of June and Royal Ascot at the end of June. Then it would be festival after festival through to the end of October, with the season proper ending with ‘Champions Day’.
The National Hunt season proper would begin on the first Saturday in November at Cheltenham, with the month of October given over in the main to ‘trial’ races for the major races slated for the months of November and December. The season should end with the Aintree National meeting in the last week of April.
The above, of course, is not so much a template for the future as a pie-in-the-sky proposal that has as many flaws as the present race schedule. It might, though, serve as a starting-off point for a general discussion on providing the sport with defined beginnings and endings for both the flat and National Hunt. 
All-weather meetings should be scheduled for the times when they are most needed and not be an integral part of the schedule. As I have said many times, the all-weather, though it serves a useful purpose, is part of the problem we have when it comes to sorting-out the uncompetitive nature of our sport. Less all-weather in the winter months could and should funnel more horses into National Hunt, even if it is at the lower levels, and less all-weather in the summer months would improve field-sizes on the turf. But that too is pie-in-the-sky thinking. (Why pies in the sky?)