The turf: Rescue remedy

Asked why he had sent a wreath in the shape of a lifebelt, a friend at the funeral of a man who had drowned replied, ‘It’s what he would have wanted.’ Does Flat racing, which keeps convincing itself it is drowning, need a lifebelt in the shape of a rich new fixture at Ascot on the second weekend in October to be called Champions Day? In the parade ring on Sunday, Ascot’s chairman Stoker Hartington, the Duke of Devonshire, just about convinced me that it does.

Asked why he had sent a wreath in the shape of a lifebelt, a friend at the funeral of a man who had drowned replied, ‘It’s what he would have wanted.’ Does Flat racing, which keeps convincing itself it is drowning, need a lifebelt in the shape of a rich new fixture at Ascot on the second weekend in October to be called Champions Day? In the parade ring on Sunday, Ascot’s chairman Stoker Hartington, the Duke of Devonshire, just about convinced me that it does.

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Samuel Gregg

The welcome fall of Klaus Schwab

In early autumn French racing comes to a crescendo with the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe weekend, and the international season winds up (though Hong Kong and Japan will disagree) with the Breeders Cup weekend in America. British racing instead expires with a whimper over several weeks after what has always been my favourite autumn meeting, Newmarket’s Champion Stakes weekend. It has offered the only card in Britain with six Group races, including the one-and-a-quarter mile Champion Stakes and the Dewhurst Stakes two-year-old championship plus the Cesarewitch, the biggest-betting autumn handicap. Now, nobly, Newmarket has ceded the Champion Stakes to Ascot, which will stage Britain’s richest-ever fixture with £3 million of prize money.

Stoker and the Racing For Change organisation, which is trying to bring a new audience to the sport, believe the new fixture will supply Flat racing with a narrative peak to rival jump racing’s annual Olympics in the shape of the Cheltenham Festival.