SIMON COX, MAURICE BARNES & BURGH BARONY.

Let's make no bones about it, in Simon Cox we may be about to throw the last dice in our dance with the devil. Too many lower case messiahs have come and gone from the B.H.A. without achieving anything more positive than making themselves more wealthy. At the start of his tenure, I was quite hostile to the appointment of Lord Allen, though I did warm to him a little once he took his seat at the B.H.A. He failed because first and foremost he was a businessman through and through and though horse racing may be an industry, it is also a sport and Lord Allen failed to grasp the concept of a marriage between the two.

Although I thought initially there were more experienced people to take the helm at the B.H.A. than Simon Cox, now that I know more about him, that he has hands-on experience of the sport as an owner and breeder, as well racing committees that he has steered, I am more hopeful of progressive change within the sport than at any time since starting this site. Of course, as with being president of the United States, which is more of a figurehead position than a position of absolute power, the Chair of the B.H.A. cannot be dictatorial, issuing decrees willy-nilly. He must cajole and smooth-talk all the various stakeholders round to his way of thinking, gain their confidence in his ideas, his vision of the future.

Most of all, Simon Cox must bring the sport together as one voice before he can go to government to advance racing's cause to the very people who in their ignorance and zeal for making everyone pay for the upkeep of a growing number of illegal immigrants are at the abyss of destroying an industry that provides the exchequer with a huge annual revenue stream. And that sentence is nowhere near as long as the sentence of poverty this Labour government is deadset on imposing on the sport.

It must be from now on, 'in Cox with Trust'. From now on it must be everyone joining hands and marching to the same tune.

One of my favourite books is a small tome written by Keith Greenwell in homage to Maurice Barnes, Grand National winning jockey and trainer. It is a self-published book and I am very fortunate to own a copy.

So you can easily imagine my disappointment at reading the following headline on the front page of today's Racing Post. Former trainer Barnes hit with eight-year welfare ban. Fortunately, for me, anyway, there was no actual cruelty involved in this case, just plain ignorance and penny-pinching. Horses in need of having their hooves trimmed; using diluted bleach to clean small wounds, a lack of medical records and such. The B.H.A. referred the matter to the R.S.P.C.A. but as no horses suffered injury at the hands of Barnes and no clear case of cruelty, they declined to take the matter further.

In the report in The Racing Post, a friend of Barnes said that Barnes 'had been traumatised by this and had taken it very badly.' Let's be clear, I have no sympathy for anyone who causes harm to horses or any animal and I have no objection to the B.H.A. taking the action they have. To me, eight-years seems excessive when others who have digressed with actual harm to horses have received lesser sentences. Perhaps I am thinking more about similar cases in Ireland but I remain of the opinion that eight-years in this instance was too high a penalty. The man is 75 and this punishment will doubtless shorten his life-span. And there is nothing remedial in this punishment. This is a sport short on manpower, perhaps short on those who care and protect horses from abuse and retrain them for a life beyond retirement from the racecourse. Could this sentence not have been for a shorter period, with a longer period of mandatory work with a racehorse charity? Maurice Barnes will learn nothing from an affair that was of his own doing; four-years community service within the equine charity world might have helped him to spread the good word to others. Barnes should never train again - he had retired anyway - but his knowledge will now be lost when it could have been used for good. Shortsightedness is everywhere, I only wish the B.H.A. would notice it.

Quite often, I read about something related to racing that is insignificant yet also mildly interesting. As I have said before, the history of our sport should never be forgotten. In his book 'Men and Horses I Have Known', George Lambton mentioned a curious custom, now deleted by act of Parliament, that in Westmorland at the succession of each Earl of Lonsdale a race meeting was held at Burgh Barony, close to Lowther. This, as I said, is insigificant and could never happen today, even if the B.H.A. allowed such one-off fixtures. I just like the informality; horse racing as a social gathering, the festive spirit of a succession to a title. The last race-meeting held on the Lowther estate was in 1883. It is just a reminder of how indelibly linked horse racing was to the aristocracy and those with political influence. 143-years later and that upstairs-downstairs world seems thousands-of-years from the world we live in today.