The Flat

I was struck that, of the four selections I made on Saturday, three on the flat and one over jumps, my judgement was only true in the Carlisle race. And how fast the Doncaster races were, over in an instant, as unsatisfying as fast food.

In this morning's Observer, which, by the way, cannot be bothered to print the race cards for the days three meetings at Musselburgh, Plumpton andTowcester, Nic Coward, chief executive of the British Horseracing Authority, is quoted as saying, 'one of our challenges is how to take a traditional fixture list built on centuries of understanding how horses develop...and build something into the existing framework to bring it to life for more people. A lot of it is about narrative. The summer story is not an easy one.'

Ignoring Coward's use of vogueish PR vocabulary such as 'narrative' and 'story', nothing could be easier to understand than the sequence of flat races through the year, the steady increase in distance from the Guineas meetings through to the autumn meetings at Newmarket, the criss-cross as racing moves from Doncaster to Newmarket to Chester to Epsom to Ascot to York to Newmarket, and so on...if the chief executive of the leading body of the sport cannot see the 'story', heaven help us all.