IT has been a strange seven days in racing. It began with universal joy for something at the heart of jump racing, the pleasure at seeing old favourites returning year after year, still running their hearts out.

It was nowhere better demonstrated than in the veterans chase at Sandown. Did Paul Nicholls not teach Dan Skelton the great gift of longevity to jump racing, of keeping old horses going? We need them as much as younger performers. The young will have their day.

Then came the shocking news about Kempton’s imminent demise.

We should always be wary when ‘very good news’ is presented big and bold at the top of a press release and something less palatable is further down.

“Proposed half a billion pound investment in British Racing” masked the Jockey Club’s decision to sell Kempton to developers in four years’ time. A Santa Claus would appear on Kempton racetrack no more.

It is true that there may be races run and won elsewhere. Famous football stadiums have vanished, big soccer clubs moved to new modern (and commercially named) homes.

But the bigger picture is that losing forever a perfect jumping track, with a great depth of history, cannot be good for the winter sport. It’s one less Grade 1 jump track no matter that its races can be run in some form elsewhere.

The Christmas Hurdle at Sandown would be totally different. We’d not see races like Harchibald’s Christmas Hurdle defeat of Rooster Booster. Sandown’s final two fences never offer the same challenge as the three up the straight at Kempton that in their time tested and claimed Gold Cup winners.

Few jumping fans are applauding the intention to build “a purpose built all-weather” at Newmarket. Do the Jockey Club think there will be a Breeders’ Cup like event there? It would be difficult to make more of the same that we have on the all-weather in the UK at the moment, more appealing.

The strangest words written came from one of the more famed defenders of all that is great in the history of jumping, one generally lauded for capturing the mood of the diehard jumping folk on such sentimental matters as the passing of the old ways, heroes and haunts.

Alastair Down wrote on Wednesday: “We are going to lose a limping old friend long ready for retirement.” Kempton’s not being retired it’s being put down.

Some of us can see our own retirement day drawing closer (said writer included) and may not relish the thought of being extinguished early for a “brave new world”.

His oft-quoted idol Capt Tim Forster might turn in his grave to see a phrase such as “new purpose-built all-weather” in a column penned by AD.

Maths was not my strong subject but the £115 million debt to be financed by the sale for £100 million leading to a £500 million investment looks to have a missing component?

Businessmen such as owner Simon Munir are not convinced of the great good of the sport being served and he is not alone.