Longing for slow days on small racecourses when coronavirus passes

This week, we ran an article on the Racing Post website about the tracks you should put on your list to visit after all this blows over. Even allowing for the fact that we deliberately avoided the giant arenas of our domestic sport – telling a racing fan to visit Ascot or Cheltenham is like telling a Parisian to check out the Eiffel Tower – it was striking that smaller tracks dominated the list, with the likes of Hexham, Killarney and Newton Abbot waxed lyrical over by our writers.

My own contribution to the list was Saint-Malo, a pretty seaside track in northern France. There's nothing particularly remarkable about Saint-Malo's tiny hippodrome – it is, much like many other small racecourses, a charming but humble track staging modest racing before modest crowds – but my one and, to date at least, only visit to the track was more enjoyable, in its own way, than so many trips to major racing festivals.

In truth though, comparing them is like comparing apples and oranges, for the true division in racing isn't between Flat and jumps but the top and the rest. On the one hand, you have your big Saturday and festival meetings, big-money affairs with crowds to match. Exhilarating, high tempo and replete with casts of sporting icons, these have as much, if not more, in common with top-level events in other sports as they do with the rest of racing. And then there is low-key, local racing, where everything including the horses moves at a gentler pace.