RACING people are generally a conservative bunch. There are blue tangs in the pool of clownfish, but generally racing people tend to gravitate towards the status quo. If racing is to change through the years, best that it is done through natural evolution. The fundamentals of horse racing have stood the test of time, the basic premise of the sport, the betting, the weight-for-age scale, the racing programme. Any proposal for radical change needs to be considered very carefully.

In that respect, it is no different to most other sports. A sport’s tradition is embedded in a sport’s history, and history takes years to create. It is in the historical events, it is at the traditional venues, that competition and desire are at their most intense.