Ruby Walsh: Making everyone a winner will only end with losers

DUNDALK RACECOURSE: Winter Friday nights there with 14-runner fields is ARC’s ideal product.

In June 2004, British Racing committed to modernisation. It set out a plan to be implemented by January 1, 2006, which would mean everybody in the sport - punters, spectators, racecourses, owners, trainers, breeders, jockeys, stable staff and bookmakers - would be better off.

It was their answer to findings made by the Office of Fair Trading to a challenge made by the racecourses, or RCA, as to who exactly should have the most say over the sport. The BHB, as the BHA was back then, argued that British Racing as a whole, who they represented, was the producer of the profit-generating product and not the racecourses.