AT LEAST HE IS A JUMPING MAN, BEVERLEY & RETURN TO RAIDING AUCTIONS TO FUND PRIZE-MONEY.

According to a front page story in The Racing Post today, owner slash breeder Simon Cox is to be announced next week as the new Chair of the B.H.A. He has owned racehorses for fifteen-years and keeps broodmares for the purpose of breeding jumpers. He is a former beer seller, rising through the ranks at Molson Cours to become president and chief executive. My first thoughts on reading of his arrival at the B.H.A. were - at least he is a jumping man and how many days a week will he give to his new post? Whether he is the right man for the job only time will tell but he seems a better fit than any of his immediate predecessors, although there remains the odour of a city man getting the job; jobs for the boys, if you wish. He is not Peter Savill, who would have been a popular choice for the vacancy, but at least he should know the difference between the two ends of a racehorse.

Beverley is the latest racecourse to suffer the indignity of having to abandon halfway through a meeting. This time the abandonment was due to neither a hole in the ground or malfunctioning drainage but a more easily rectified problem of scuffed-up turf two to three-inches deep on a part of the course that jockeys considered represented an unavoidable hazard.

This, of course, is the latest in a growing number of racecourses that have suffered disruption to their season through various problems related to ground disturbances, be it holes caused by drainage or ancient mining activity, pests like leatherjackets or the issue that caused the abandonment at Beverley this week. With perhaps the exception of Brighton's war with leatherjackets, I suspect there is a common denominator at play here, mainly over watering and latterly the unusually hot weather. This is no criticism of racecourse management. You only have to see the brown grass of Ascot's National Hunt course in comparision to the lush green sward of the flat course to understand the necessity of irrigating to maintain good-to-firm ground. I just feel there must be an alternative method to simply pouring water on the racecourse. Gardeners can use a gel-like substance to hold the water in the soil to prevent pots from drying out too quickly. I don't know if something similar could be applied under the turf, if only in parts of the course prone to drying out quickly. Of course, even if this were to be a solution to the over-watering problem during the summer months, it might have the opposite effect during the winter or rainy months. Or would the white fleeces used to protect the ground from frosts deflect the warmth of the sun and allow for a milder climate under them, stopping evaporation and slowing. the drying out process I just hope somewhere, someone, is working on a solution.

I simply know that I have overlooked or am ignorant of a reason why money cannot be diverted from horses sold at auction and into general prize money. Yesterday afternoon, I e-mailed Tom Ellis, editor of The Racing Post, with a quick sketch of my idea, asking if he would run the idea past Bill Barber, the paper's industry editor, for his analysis, suggesting he might do the math of 3% of turnover at all the auction sales last year. (Some people, I believe, view such Herculean tasks as fun) I do not know the exact expenditure by buyers at all the public auctions last year but if it were 50-million, that would provide a substantial windfall. That is 3% of the money received by breeders or vendors and 3% of the purchase price paid by the buyer, similar to the scheme that provides funds for the care of retired racehorses.

Of course such a levy might persuade breeders/vendors to boycott Tattershall and other British on-line and in-the-flesh auction houses in preference to Ireland or France. But if the breeder/vendor is losing a small percentage of their profit, this in turn may lead to stallion owners having to reduce fees if breeders, thinking of their profit margins, choose to send their blue-blooded mares to slightly cheaper stallions. And, of course, higher rates of prize-money on British racecourses may result in more people being attracted to owning a racehorse, which would lead to greater competition in the sales ring. To my way of thinking, naive as it may be, this is not a chicken and egg conundrum but a circle of life solution, if not wholly, to the greatest problem facing our sport.