YOU couldn’t escape the feeling this week that we were losing a few things that defined quality from our racing landscape.

That’s quality as ‘the standard of something as measured against other things of a similar kind; the degree of excellence’.

The week began by the news that the Timeform Annual will be no more. Chasers and Hurdlers of 2019/2020 will be the last as it will cease to be published.

Where once we young racing addicts longed to be able to afford this bible, now in a changed era, racing fans trade their own 10 to follows for the jumping seasons up on social media and everyone is an expert. It’s easily accessed and few would contemplate paying £75 for carefully crafted essays on the star horses, or keep a reference book for every horse that raced through the year.

It was a week too of some chat on the training of racehorses. It saw the departure from the stage of one who served his working life doing just that and guided the careers of stars such as Ridgewood Pearl, Sinndar and Sea The Stars, along with a host of other Group 1 winners.

The Racing Post stuck up a clip online showing pundit Graeme Rodway declaring “how hard can it be to train a racehorse? I’ve never trained a horse in my life but there don’t seem to be heck of a lot of science about it, get ‘em fit, keep ‘em well.”

Gaye Kellleway summed up the opinions of many in a short tweet – Complete and utter muppet ... horses are not machines.

Very much like another great from the ranks – Henry Cecil, John Oxx never treated horses like machines.

The ‘art’ of modern training was a topic touched on in Nick Luck’s Sunday Racing TV programme with a feature on Oliver Cole. The trainer (licenced with his father Paul) told of how he use technology, a Go Pro on a quad ahead of the gallops, to film all work, to keep owners informed by sending work videos to them to view. “We film everything, it’s got speed, a map, altitude, we send to owners, show it to all the lads at breakfast.” Everyone sees everything.

Dan Abraham, chairman of the Racehorse Syndicates Association, echoed the need for these methods in a Racing Post column in the week.

“Trainers will need to massively improve their use of technology so they can make their ownership experience better than somebody else’s. I think we will see younger and more tech-minded people coming into ownership.”

Yet, could technology improve the methods Henry Cecil used to harness Frankel’s early impetiousness or Oxx’s skill at guiding Sea The Stars?

But ownership is changing, there are fewer owner/breeders to go around that will allow a trainer free rein or to rest on their achievements. Oxx, deprived for some time of a supply of well-bred horses, decided the time is right.

Perhaps there are many like Rodway, deceived into thinking horses train themselves, trainers just feed them and follow them to the gallops every day.

It’s also an era where horses seem to last for a much shorter period of time, with injuries blighting many seasons. Are the two linked in this faster paced environment?

Alongside the many famous racing names most of us grew up with, the Piggotts and the Cecils, there was always a J Oxx on an Irish racing card.

If ever there was a horse trainer odds-on to fulfil the requirement of Kipling’s “If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposers just the same,” it was John Oxx.

Looking and listening to the modern demands of trainers, you do think perhaps, like Henry Cecil, if ever there was a trainer not suited to this demanding ‘winners matter’ life it was John Oxx.

In a TDN interview a few years ago Oxx was commenting on the modern racing landscape: “Breeders are always confusing distance with speed. They don’t realise the difference between real class and just precocity…. I do think there’s a drift away from knowing what class is.”

The time may well be right. It’s a results-driven era. There are a few humans in the ‘precocious’ class too who may not last the distance. But you feel that a huge proportion of those who follow racing now don’t recognise that class endures.