IT is difficult to believe it now, but when British Champions Day was first mooted as a possibility it prompted a chorus of dissent from that most vocal and difficult-to-please of groups, ‘The Doubters’.

The Doubters never stop doubting, but they do - mercifully and advisedly - seem to have turned their attentions elsewhere in this instance. Anyone who thought the latest British flat-season finale - the sixth in all - was other than a success is probably following the wrong sport.