Racing's real fans need more love from courses if we're to keep coming through the gates

Saturday was a good day. I was wandering around Cheltenham, with no professional obligation to be there, just drinking it all in and thinking, 'Why on earth don't I do this more often?'.

Of course, it's easy to love an eight-race card as full of talent and drama as that one. A couple of days later, reading Lee Mottershead's column, I was left thinking, 'Why on earth don't other people go to jump racing's big days more often?'. 

Mottershead cited some troubling attendance figures for fixtures whose success we ought to be able to take for granted, like the Coral Gold Cup at Newbury, the King George VI Chase at Kempton and the Tingle Creek at Sandown. All of them have seemingly lost thousands of racegoers in just a few years, although Mottershead also quoted other examples where the numbers are going the right way.