Perhaps it's time to give the Flat season another new look

Horseracing can be a complicated sport at the best of times, and of course that's part of its fascination, but you can have too much of a good thing. It's the simplest thing in the world - who gets to the finish first? - but we beset it round and blunt its shining edge.

Leaving aside the crass and laughable method of defining the leading owner in Britain, whereby the triumvirate of Magnier, Smith and Tabor are deemed to be different concerns depending on where their names fall on the racecard, which is a little like suggesting that although 2 + 2 = 4, if you switch the first 2 with the second 2 it would equal something entirely different, like 187, which is scary, the way we reach a verdict on the champion Flat jockey and trainer is almost as convoluted.

This is not new, of course, but surely it's about time something is done about it. At present, the two championships are neither decided by the same parameters nor run parallel with each other. It's as though there's nothing connecting them at all.