Lack of women an own goal for global racing league - and it’s not the only issue facing an otherwise laudable concept

On a grey autumnal Wednesday 45 years ago, Sandown attracted 8,000 people for an afternoon of back-end Flat racing. The unusually large midweek crowd was drawn to the track to see something different. The world has changed a lot since then, but the organisers of a new global jockeys' league will be hoping what worked then can still work now.

The Sandown fixture was special because it hosted the Chivas Regal Trophy, a three-race competition between teams of British and American jockeys. The United States lifted the trophy thanks to Willie Shoemaker winning two of the three races but, for those who went to Sandown, it probably made little difference who won. What surely mattered most was who was there.

The competition continued for a few more years, although by 1982 there was no sponsorship and the contests instead included the Santa Anita Sprint and Meadowlands Stayers', which the 6st 11lb Shoemaker landed on a John Dunlop-trained three-year-old called Aura. A few weeks earlier Shoemaker had made another trip to Britain, primarily this time to compete in a match race against Lester Piggott. The American legend won that and then completed a double against a larger field of domestic riders in a ten-furlong handicap.