Sport is made for betting

The supposedly sacred day of Good Friday to me just means an extra day to do the form for Saturday, and for Australian racing, this year it's the Golden Slipper, the richest 2yo race in the world. Worth $3.5m in total (equates to £2.11m or US$3.2m), it is open to all-comers, the best of this two-year-old crop. To put that in perspective, the entire Cheltenham festival was worth £3.4m in 2010. Held at Rosehill Gardens in western Sydney, the race suits Sydney's impatient 'I want it now' and 'News today, fish and chips wrapping tomorrow' style of living. Allowing a horse to develop for a career as a mature racehorse, perhaps over distance, rarely happens. So the Australian breeding industry has changed significantly. Everything is now about juvenile racing, but specifically up to a mile, rather than a Derby distance which is more than norm north of the equator. I'm not against sprinting, although I do prefer longer races, it's the heavy workload placed on 2...

No great surprise there, but racing really needs to do something about keeping its superstars in the game for longer. One season is not enough to class him as a true champion - you have to come back and defend your crowns to earn that. As a 2yo, he showed potential, at 3 he was the best by far and at 4 and beyond he'll be shagging his life away making his shareholders very rich, and hopefully throwing some talented progeny. So what can flat racing do to prolong the racing careers of its stars? Jumping tops the popularity stakes in Britain mostly because Kauto Star, Denman, Hardy Eustace, Istabraq and other stars come back year after year. The public feel a connection with these horses built up over more than a few months. Here's an idea - create a jackpot pool so that any horse who wins a feature, open age Group I race two years in a row gets a bonus on top of the winner's cheques. So if Sea The Stars collected £1m for winning the Arc, next year he would be racing for an ex...