Racing's two-tier approach threatens to create a palace of cards

Celebrating the BHA's tenth anniversary recently, chief executive Nick Rust admitted the ambition to boost racing's total attendance to seven million by 2020 had been shelved. The goal had only been announced in 2015 as part of racing's 'Strategy For Growth' – a plan that also called for increases in horses in training and prize-money –so this marked a pretty quick climbdown. Fail fast, as the Silicon Valley tech entrepreneurs call it.

It was always an ambitious target – perhaps impossibly so – since racing's annual attendance has been effectively flat at around six million for some years now. It would be tempting to leave it there, to dismiss the episode as just an example of the sport overreaching itself. Yet the abandonment of this goal merits further reflection, because it highlights some important home truths the sport should consider.

Racing, as we know, is Britain's second biggest sport by spectator numbers. While that is a fact to celebrate it only tells half the story, because the data behind the bare facts suggest that racing's audience is soft, composed largely of not the famous once-a-year racegoers of received wisdom, but those who are essentially one-off racegoers.