BHA handicapper: 'No-one can say we're lazy buggers who did nothing'

The BHA’s head of handicapping says his team will take a far more proactive approach in future after announcing changes to their methodology on Wednesday in the wake of the poor performance of British horses at the Cheltenham Festival.

Among changes outlined as part of the BHA’s Quality Jumps Review, older horses will receive bigger drops after being beaten and the approach to handicapping novice hurdlers will be reassessed.

Explaining the rationale behind the changes, Dominic Gardiner-Hill said: "There was an awful lot of talk about how not just the Graded races [at Cheltenham] but the handicaps went. Ireland won seven, Britain won two. We then had the Grand National, and personally I think there were other issues involved there, but it was another issue on top of what happened at Cheltenham.