Tom Segal on why the Willie Mullins domination is slowly eroding the competitive foundations of racing

For about a decade our family used to go to north Devon for a week away every year. We stopped going when the kids got too old and found walking on the beach far too boring, but before we did I will never forget the Dutch pancake seller on the beachfront telling us in no uncertain terms that the whole north Devon economy was dying.

He thought the reason was because all the houses were being bought up by wealthy people who spent at most a couple of weeks in them a year and as a result the local economy was unsustainable. I'm no economist and there are surely many more issues than that, but there's no doubt that small business get swallowed up by the big fish all the time and we surely have to be careful that racing doesn't go the same way.

Last week Willie Mullins had runners in eight Graded races and won seven of them, with six other horses placed in the same races. At Cheltenham he won the Cotswold Chase with Capodanno, who was beaten out of sight by his best staying chaser, while Lossiemouth would surely be second favourite for the Champion Hurdle if she was to run there but won't because Mullins has two others in the race. If that isn't an example of what the Devon pancake seller was trying to tell me, then nothing is.