Huge sums made by racing's drug dealers underline need for powerful action

How lovely it was to be at Goodwood on Saturday. The weather was glorious, the racing was exciting and, to complement the action on the track, an excellent food festival took place across various sites on the racecourse, featuring cookery demonstrations and a farmers' market.

A farmers' market was a popular addition to Goodwood's three-day meetingCredit: Lee Mottershead

Goodwood deserves all the positive coverage. It also merits praise for responding so strongly to the disgraceful scenes that marred its previous Saturday fixture, when a 50-man brawl delivered terrible headlines, as did another awful fight at Ascot the following week.

Alcohol will have been a contributory factor to those appalling acts of violence but equally, as this column pointed out two weeks ago, the use of cocaine in and around racecourses has almost certainly increased to the stage where action is needed.