DON’T know about you, but I’m heartily sick of the Jockeys’ Championship hogging the headlines on the racing pages.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve absolutely nothing against either Silvestre de Sousa or Jim Crowley, both of whom are fine examples to younger riders, and who would be deserving winners of the title, but thankfully horse racing isn’t just a numbers game, and boiling a day’s racing down to how much the gap between the pair has opened or closed is taking the main participants - the horses - unforgivably out of the equation.

Of course it’s easier now to follow the fortunes of the leading flat jockeys since the boring bits of the season have been handily excised, but it’s also harder to feel any fanaticism about a competition which was always a little bit phoney, but is now almost meaningless, with three different definitions of what constitutes the season proper, and increasing chances of having a champion jockey riding considerably less winners than a supposed also-ran.

The history of the championship is a record of extreme achievement, and for once the numbers mean something, with Fred Archer’s feat of riding a double-century of winners 140 years ago absolutely stunning in retrospect, while Gordon Richards tally of 259 between the wars has been the stuff of legend ever since.

Visit the PJA website and you will see a list of champions since 1970, featuring many great names, but absolutely no numbers, because the new championship has rendered numbers meaningless.

By doing so, we’ve taken something of the meaning away from the achievements of Nat Flatman, George Fordham, Fred Archer, Steve Donoghue and Sir Gordon Richards.

It must be galling for Luke Morris and Adam Kirby, both of whom could be end 2016 having ridden most winners in Britain, to read every day about the battle between Crowley and de Sousa, and if historic riding records are to be relevant, then it is the names of Morris and Kirby which will be writ large in the annals of history, with the former having been the de facto champion in 2015, and Kirby the winningmost rider in 2014.

Morris still leads the unofficial 2016 championship, but is never likely to be crowned, and that fact alone makes a mockery of the concept of celebrating riders in terms of their fecundity.

But it’s not the injustice to Luke Morris which grates with me, but the fact that the phoney war continually detracts from what is genuinely engaging in the sport, and that is the battle between horses on the track.

We’ve got to the stage where we could witness the most rousing St Leger ever run in living memory this weekend (it’s unlikely, but bear with me), only to wake up to the headline “De Sousa and Crowley still neck and neck!”, in the morning.

It’s fundamentally about the horses, and the race for the jockeys is five weeks away from its conclusion, so the obsession with this aspect of the season is wearing very thin. Let’s get back to the main story, folks!

BALLOTING

Not making much of a splash in terms of the news was a recent blog by BHA head of handicapping Phil Smith, explaining why balloting for big handicaps was based on weight rather than rating, therefore making it increasingly hard for three-year-old handicappers to get into races like the Ebor.

”The core reason is the Weight For Age scale and how horses are allocated ratings. In the Ebor a three-year-old receives 12lbs from an older horse. If a hypothetical three-year-old ran against a 95-rated older horse and they were to dead-heat, the three-year-old would also be rated 95 but is intrinsically a 12lbs. inferior animal. He has been given the weight for age to compensate him for a lack of maturity, experience and ability.

Therefore, if the 95 rated three-year-old was given priority over the 95-rated older horse for entry to the Ebor then you would be including a horse that was 12lbs “inferior” to the older horse.

This goes against the meritocratic principle behind the elimination process. Horses are often campaigned in order to get in to valuable races like the Betfred Ebor by being run and advancing their official rating. It would then seem unfair for that horse to miss out in favour of an “inferior” horse, purely in order to artificially ensure that some three-year-olds compete in the race.

Effectively, the discontent would then be voiced by the owners of the older brigade rather than the supporters of the classic generation.”

This is all very interesting, but there are a couple of glaring issues in the wording, firstly in Smith’s assessment that a horse receives WFA to compensate for “lack of...experience and ability” - this is plain nonsense.

If an allowance was given to compensate for lack of experience, then it would apply to horses according to how many times they had raced rather than their age, and plenty of three-year-old handicappers have seen just as much racecourse action as their later-developing elders.

Similarly, the mention of ability is a red herring. Horses are compensated for lack of ability by lower handicap marks, and by using this language, Smith is simply trying to paint the classic generation as less deserving of a run than their counterparts, which is not backed up by any meaningful argument.

When the Derby winner beats the Coronation Cup winner in a close finish to the King George, there is no objection to the former’s success on the basis that he is an inferior animal who shouldn’t have his chance, and that’s how it should be in the top handicaps.

By all means, favour the older horses with identical handicap marks in the case of a final ballot, but let’s not rob our best races of their intrigue by conspiring to keep the youngsters out.