OUR big day is now upon us and tomorrow our two-year-old charger Saffizz will feature live on Channel Four from Doncaster in the 3.10pm race.

Saffizz is in great form even though he is lazy while training. He is hopefully keeping it for the racecourse.

Uncle Exact is also in the field but Jacques Reply misses out after being listed at the five-day declaration stage for the same Doncaster £200,000 St Leger Yearly Stakes. So the prospect of two horses from East Lancashire in this prestigious event is mouthwatering - Uncle Exact and Jacques Reply are owned by the Good Hand Syndicate which operates from Uncle Jack's pub in Lower Darwen.

It has cost us £2,000 in stakes to enter Saffizz for this race, which compared to other sports is outrageous, when you take into consideration athletes get paid to run, footballers to play, and darts players and snooker players all get appearance money.

It is not so with horseracing. We have to pay to enter our horses, transport costs and the jockey as well. Yet millions of pounds in profit are made by the bookmakers, racecourses and the Government every year.

At some courses, like Haydock, they charge owners and trainers to upgrade our badges to use their new facilities! Yet without us they wouldn't need those facilities. If we take our family out for the day to see our horses running, they give us four free tickets, so I end up paying for two more tickets for us to watch our own horse run, even though I have already paid to enter the horse - racing is far from fair to its racehorse owners.

There is an organisation called the Racehorse Owners' Association, but I resigned from it several years ago, mainly because people like Peter Savill - who was then chairman of the ROA, and is now chairman of the British Horseracing Board - had done very little for owners.

Racing is in the doldrums and needs to be sorted out very quickly. My proposal to bring all parties (bookmakers, BHB, Jockey Club, racecourses and Government) round a table, then for the owners to take a decision not to make any entries for say the month of June (Derby month).

I hope you have still been following Les Eyre's stable who have had 14-1 and 10-1 winners again last Friday. Keep following Les. On Friday, both Uncle Exact and Jacques Reply could be in the money, as they are each listed for the six-furlong £40,000 DBS St Leger Yearling Stakes.

Have a good week.

TIPS FOR THE WEEK:

Doncaster (Wednesday) - Amaranth (nap)

Doncaster (Wednesday) - Pipadash (e/w)

Doncaster (Wednesday)- Innuendo

Doncaster (Thursday) - Cruinn A Bhord (nap)

Goodwood (Friday) - Sarafan (nap)

Doncaster (Friday) - Jacques Reply (EW)

Doncaster (Saturday) - Ramruma (nap); Ramruma and Tchaikovsky (forecast)

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.