The shadow behind the Britsh Horseracing Authority's good news on prize money But that is hardly surprising, given that it cherry picked its popular Boxing Day and Grand National day fixtures and spirited them away to other tracks that it owns. ARC will no doubt be congratulating itself on cutting overhead costs, whilst being able to utilise Hereford's greatest assets - the fixtures - elsewhere. But reducing the number of jump-racing tracks is a disastrous development. It does not take a genius to work out that the turf on any one track can only take so many meetings. And the worse the state of the ground gets, the higher the risk of injuries to the horses. It is difficult to see what the end game will be at Hereford. What, for instance, would the BHA's position be if ARC does asset strip the fixtures away to its other tracks, and then hands back the lease of the track to the council, which owns it. The council has made it clear that it would like to see racing continue in its town, so it would presumably like the lease back. And it would have a couple of tenders from consortiums who would like to come in and run the track. But would the BHA be happy to issue new fixtures? Or alternatively, could it stop ARC transferring the fixtures in the first instance? What is not known is how much input the Horsemen's Group had into the raising of prize money last week. It is no secret that Paul Bittar, the chief executive of the BHA, who must take credit for this development, does not have a high opinion of those operating the HG. So the idea that Bittar might have kissed and made up over bacon sandwiches is a stretch too far for the imagination. That relationship is going to need a lot of therapy before the plates stop flying. But the HG needs to get back into bed fairly quickly, because its input, as far as designing future race programmes is concerned, is critical. The structure and timing of the fixtures must be focused absolutely on the horses, not the betting shops. The overriding principle must be that the emphasis is on creating a framework within which horses can be nurtured, developed and campaigned with their best interests at heart. nd not that the horses are treated like spins on a slot machine, galloping around on unsuitable tracks, at the wrong stage of their development, just to generate betting turnover. That, were it to happen, would be the beginning of the end.