WHAT is by far the biggest problem for racing at the moment? On this week’s conversations it appears to be owners. Too many of them! Those owners who buy the best prospects, put hundreds of thousands into the game, and want the best trainers to train their horses and choose where to race?

Maybe it’s another unfortunate element of having wealthy owners in the sport, that they don’t seek a return on investment and can afford to wait for one or two big potential pay days a year. We see Constitution Hill only when Nicky Henderson feels he won’t be beaten? But then if those owners announce they are cutting back, it’s another, oh no, not good for the industry headline.

It is to his credit that Willie Mullins trained 19 individual Grade 1 winners last season for 14 different owners, including Scaramanga’s success in the US. That is some feat in itself, finding races to keep everyone happy.

Gordon Elliott is more reliant on a smaller group of owners at the top level – Gigginstown, Bective, Caldwell, Robcour and perhaps J.P. McManus, but they pay colossal money for their hobby. And to not be allowed run their horses where they choose?

It’s easy to argue that we are a long way from an ideal scenario that saw big prizes of the 2022/’23 season, the Thyestes Chase, Leopardstown Handicap Chase, Irish Grand National, Galway Hurdle and Galway Plate go to the Mullins or Elliott yards.

The few exceptions in big handicaps were the 2022 Troytown to Peter Fahey, the Paddy Power Chase to Eric McNamara and the Kerry National to Martin Brassil.

It’s been a issue here for a few years. Gigginstown ran 12 in the 2019 Irish Grand National. But Willie Mullins filled the first three places for three different owners.

Potentially forcing trainers to select their four best from all owners for the big races can only be counter-productive. Ways will be found to surmount it. Did restrictions ever work? Willie to Emmet? Gigginstown to a trainer near you?

An outsider would surely wonder why should you try to prevent an owner who has paid nearly €1m for jumping horses, from running them in the bigger value races.

I can’t quite see the argument that a four-horse race with all Gigginstown horses trained by Gordon Elliott will have any more appeal if it was a four-horse race with them trained by Mullins, de Bromhead or O’Brien. How would punters find it a better spectacle?

The current issue centres on National Hunt handicaps, but for competitive racing, even on the flat, a stat as in Ballydoyle having 37.5% of the Derby field in Serpentine’s 2021 success, is not a good look either.

Solutions are not easy. It would be quite comical were a means of using the NFL draft system, the second level of trainers guaranteed a pick, so that one of the €200,000+ point-to-pointers through the ring were to be sent to their yards after each big sales session.

But Liz Doyle’s interview on RacingTV on Thursday suggested to “help the smaller trainers rather than punish those who are good” – made a lot more sense.

I THINK I’m going to set up a small Road to Cheltenham column and make a list of every horse that has been put up each week by many eminent pundits for the Albert Bartlett. Then I’ll have a look come March, to see where we stand relative to price and who actually will run. So far the list that came to my eyes iconsists of: Primoz, Mahon’s Way, Firefox, Waterford Whispers and Croke Park. It’ll be a mini lottery come March.