Fontwell: the perfect place to get close to the action

As a racegoer, Fontwell is my favourite racecourse because you can still get so close to the action by standing in the middle of the course. That's what first attracted me to the sport, the chance to stand by a fence and watch the horses take off and land, and then dash across the track to watch them again, two fences on each circuit.

For this reason, Fontwell's a great place to take people who've never been racing before and show them the excitement of it, especially as you can park a car in the centre of the track and have everything going on around you. There used to be lots of racecourses where you could park by the rail, have a base close to a fence – Plumpton is good for this too – but these days there are fewer opportunities to do that, which is a shame.

In my role as a commentator, two courses that are poles apart stand out as favourites. The first is Goodwood – when I look out from the commentary position all I can see are the rolling Downs, with barely a man-made structure to break the view. There's nothing to date that view, it can hardly have changed for 300 years.