I’ve always liked horse racing, the bright colours of the jockeys’ uniforms, the beauty and grace of their mounts, the noise of the crowds, the lines of bookies stood behind their boards tempting you with their odds and then, if you’re lucky, the excitement as your chosen horse gallops towards the winning post in first place. In recent years, however, I’ve started to feel a little uncomfortable about National Hunt racing and the number of deaths occurring, particularly in steeplechases where the fences are so much higher than in the hurdles.

I didn’t have a bet in Saturday’s Grand National, largely because the race is something of a lottery and it’s often difficult to make a meaningful selection based on form and class. I watched the race though and was saddened to see that yet again, it was marred by two fatalities, one of whom, Synchronised, had to be destroyed one month after winning the Gold Cup at Cheltenham, one of the most prestigious trophies in horse racing.

Of course the deaths have sparked off the usual calls for the race to be banned and even for the whole sport to be outlawed. You may think that that is a bit extreme but the voices are getting louder and as the death toll mounts you have to admit that it’s hardly surprising. I read that approximately forty horses per year die at UK race courses and there were certainly five fatalities alone at the Cheltenham Festival held over a four day period last month. That is terrible and clearly something has to be done about it. The question though is what? It seems to me that we should approach the issue as coolly and unemotionally as possible and employ the best possible experts from horse racing and animal welfare to examine every facet of the sport starting with the premise that safety (both human and equine) has to be paramount.

Questions need to be asked and discussed fully such as, are the fences too high? Are the races too long? Are there too many competitors? These seem to be particularly pertinent to the Grand National, one of the, if not the, longest races in the racing calendar and a race where a multitude of participants funnel tightly together as they jump the early fences. The investigation should be initiated by the racing authorities themselves otherwise the voices of protesters will become louder, the Government may intervene (remember fox-hunting?) and the sport could be banned completely.

However, all is not doom and gloom, there is a precedent here and all the horse racing authorities need to do is look at motor racing. Up until the 1980s Formula 1 was carnage with drivers being killed on a regular basis. Eventually, the sport cleaned up its act and introduced stringent safety measures which have been so successful that there has been just one fatality, I think, in the last twenty years. So, it can be done, all that is required is will and determination. Oh, and a belief perhaps that the life of a horse is not worth that much less than the life of a human.