Sir, - Your report in the January 18th edition of The Irish Field, headlined ‘AIRO denies ‘prize money cuts for more races’ claim’, states that John Lynam opposed any proposal from the trainers’ association to alter the rating bands for lower grade handicaps.

John is quoted as saying that the proposal was to extend random balloting from the 45-65 category to include horses rated 66-70.

To me, this article was misleading as the reader could, or perhaps would, presume that the ‘new band‘ idea was simply being extended to include all horses rated 66-70, therefore creating a single 45-70 bracket, in effect adding to the already oversubscribed number of entries in such races.

The fact is that the ‘suggestion’ being made was actually to divide the lower handicap bands into two sections, i.e. 45-60 and 61-70, in an attempt to alleviate some of the problems currently being experienced through oversubscription of such races.

Apparently the proposed new 61-70 grade would have had the same random balloting conditions as the proposed 45-60 grade, but surely the ‘top down’ rule could have been implemented in the higher grade if that was deemed to have been more favourable.

Being both an owner and a trainer, I have sought a written reply from both the Irish Racehorse Trainers Association and the Association of Irish Racehorse Owners as to the logic behind any such proposals and as to what exact grounds AIRO’s flat rejection of same was made. Sadly, to date, I have not received a satisfactory reply from either side.

I eagerly look forward to both sides’ members receiving logical and structured reasoning as to which proposed method is fairest to a category that includes more than half of the racehorses in training at any one time. - Yours etc.,

BRENDAN W. DUKE

Pollardstown,

The Curragh,

Co Kildare