GOODWOOD AND YORK SPARK DEBATE & PHOTO FINISH CONTROVERSY.

Well, something had to be done; someone had to move things forward and congratulations to the good people of Goodwood and York for grasping the heated handle. Of course, Ascot started things off by announcing they were resigning from the Race Course Association (RCA) and now Goodwood and York have got together to propose a shake-up of racing's governance. They have jointly proposed that the sport be split into 3 sectors, rather like the days when there was The Jockey Club and The National Hunt Committee, going forward with a nod to the past. What is proposed is that there should be an Elite Flat Panel, Foundation Flat Panel and a Jumps Panel, which I hope and pray is titled The National Hunt Committee. All commercial and committee groups will be consigned to the bin to remove self-interest stifling progress. Each panel would have three representatives of licenced professionals, owners and breeders and 3 B.H.A. nominated members, of which one will be chair and have a casting vote when a casting vote is required.

Though this a demand for change, and quickly, it is not a set-in-stone proposal; it is a starting point for responsible discussion. How this can be achieved when the B.H.A. has not yet even started interviewing candidates for the post of Chair of the organisation might be the first stumbling block to be overcome. And overcome it must, and speedily. Whether I like the idea of splitting the flat into what might be a divisions of 'have and have-not' is open for internal debate. What I fear is a premiership style of 'haves', with the smaller country racecourses having to survive on scraps. In the past, when the hue and cry from people with no thought for the future, one Channel 4 pundit (ex Timeform) referred to the lowest grade of horse as 'rubbish', which got my back-up,  I suggested instead of discarding this lowest band of horas unfit for purpose, races might be invented solely for them, with meetings at a point-to-point level, with trophies for the winners plus minimal prize-money. My overriding thought was that in the future we might need every owner we could get our hands on and in discarding the poorest of horses, we might be discarding the people who owned them.

Time has moved on and though there are too many fixtures, we should embrace every horse in training while numbers fall year-in, year-out. I hope the great and the good of the sport can now get around the table and reconstruct how the sport is governed and financed. The time has gone for hoping the winds will turn in our favour; we need good captaincy, a sure hand at the tiller, with every member of the industry pulling at the ropes in unison. But most of all we need professional racing people acting in the interests of the sport, not through self-interest. Ever since the B.H.B. became the B.H.A., and no doubt for decades before, the governance of our sport has been crap and to continue with my rather lame maritime theme, the beautiful and historic ship is heading for the rocks of extinction .....

On Saturday at Newmarket, Magnitude, trained by James Owen and Mythical Bay, trained by Ian Balding, fought out a titanic finish that took the judge five-minutes to decide which had prevailed. I must say that on first looking I thought Mythical Bay had held on, though on replay I thought Magnitude had got up. The judge eventually decided in favour of Mythical Bay by a nose, yet on seeing the photo-finish print I cannot understand why a dead-heat was not given. Mythical Bay may have been a quarter-of-an-inch in fronat the line but should that be enough to decide one horse a winner and the other not? It is the same with VAR when a player has no more than the tip of his boot in behind the last defender, scores a wonder goal and yet it is ruled offside. Life is too short for there to be no discretion, where brilliance is deemed a non-event for the length of a fraction.