what is required now is for the B.H.a. to show foresight and creativity.

​As Ireland presently demonstrates, when there is a will there is usually a way. Horse Racing Ireland is keeping the show on the road and thank God (even if I am atheist) for them. From Monday to Saturday racing is taking place in the Republic, something that has not happened at any time during my long-lived life. Horse Racing Ireland are moving heaven and Earth to help the industry that contributes so much to the Irish economy. The B.H.A. in contrast capitulated, threw-up its hands in horror at the complexity of the situation and basically sucked-up to the British government.
And I don’t buy into the argument put forward by the journalists at the Racing Post who to a man believe or write that it would be an embarrassment to the sport if a jockey was injured during a race and needed to be taken as an emergency to a local hospital, depriving someone suffering from the Covid 19 flu outbreak the services of a nurse, doctor, ambulance driver, paramedic or Air Ambulance.
Would a trainer be too embarrassed to call for emergency medical help if one of his or her staff was badly injured on the gallops or a visiting jockey suffered a bad fall while schooling or riding away a young horse? Because I really do not see the difference. 
Yes, we live in troubled times and though my thoughts on the seriousness of the situation is guided by knowing no one who has contracted the virus, by people who are numbered as having contracted the virus but who by any medical diagnosis not precipitated by the protocol of the official narrative would be diagnosed with a throat infection or a cold and by the math which suggest that out of a population of 67-million only just over 6,600 are thought to have been made ill, in some way or other, by the virus, the majority of which would have suffered only mild to moderate flu symptoms, and we, as a sport, should not make waves that in the future will count against us with the political establishment. I maintain, though, there could so easily have been a compromise.
If not a meeting a day, as in Ireland, then perhaps four meetings a week, two jumps, two flat, just to keep the sport ticking along, to offer some certainty or clarity to those people whose livelihoods depend on race-meetings taking place. Not the major meetings like Aintree, but the everyday fare, Chelmsford, Hexham and so on. Jockeys could be zoned so they could only ride at a meeting if they live in a 50-square mile area to the racecourse, with, as in Ireland, no car-sharing and the social distancing protocol as demonstrated at Thurles and Naas.
Where other main-line sports have postponed I am deeply critical of the B.H.A. for cancelling, as they have done with the Grand National, as if it is inconsequential, as if later in the year the sport would have no need of the revenue that accompanies the race.
I am pretty certain that at this very moment discussions are taking place between the B.H.A. and ‘stakeholders’ to find a way of staging the classic races, Royal Ascot and fitting into what will be (hopefully) a packed summer of racing all or as many of the major flat festivals as is feasible – moving heaven and Earth to get them on. Bringing foresight (which the B.H.A. as a collective sadly lacks) and creativity to the problem, something they scandalously failed to do with their decision to just abandon the Grand National.
One further thought: the people who will be most adversely affected by the cessation to racing are those at the lower end of the sport, the journeyman jockeys and the stables with fewer than twenty horses. Instead of expecting government hand-outs to financially sustain the people who are the backbone of the sport, the B.H.A. should be arranging the race programme, once we are back and running, so that at every fixture there is a race restricted to either journeyman jockeys or the small stable. Horse Racing has a duty to help and care-for those who strive so hard for so little reward.
Oh, and the Animal Health Trust has announced it might have to close due to financial difficulties – the B.H.A. and those in the sport who are mega-rich should put their hands in their collective pockets to ensure this vital cog in the health of the horse can continue to help save equine lives. We will become starkly aware of their importance when they are no more.