Cheltenham Festival changes should help jump racing - but they need to be part of a wider overhaul

Just the start. That has been the expectation following last week's news of the tweaks to two races at the Cheltenham Festival. We wait and see whether there will be any big surprises among the changes still to be revealed, although we live in hope because a dearth of surprises at the March gala is what has finally driven this process. 

The first and probably the most significant evolutions were the metamorphosis of the Turners Novices' Chase into the lost novice handicap chase and the cross-country race reverting to a handicap.

One of my favourite misguided defences of the Turners is the one that turns on the amount of good horses who have run in or won it. Exactly. Those horses should be running in races like the Arkle or the Brown Advisory and adding depth, and if a two-and-a-half-mile Grade 1 is what best suits them then there are fine options at Fairyhouse and Aintree.