STOP BOOZE BRAWLERS

Racecourses provide the wherewithal for a potentially toxic mix of alcohol and excitement with the added ingredient of large sums of money changing hands.

In a way we can count ourselves lucky the problem has not escalated further.

Yet it is bad enough and racecourses, who profit nicely from the sale of drink, are simply bloody feeble when it comes to dealing with all the resultant problems.

There have been major brawls recently at Sandown and Newmarket but it is not just the actual violence that is the problem.

Equally vile is the intimidatory conduct of large groups leering and targeting women whose attractiveness or lack of it takes the bleary eye of the brain dead after six pints.

It would be a massive help if racecourses enforced their own rules and limited racegoers to drinking in bars or strictly zoned outside areas rather than letting people wandering round the course pint in hand.

Sandown is one of the worst offenders in this regard as there seems to be virtually nowhere you cannot go with a drink in your paw.

The fracas at Newmarket recently was at the July Meeting — though to be fair the main bouts usually take place on the Rowley Mile.

What is quite unacceptable is that racegoers quietly going about their own business should be bullied or abused by drunks — whose courage would almost certainly desert them if they were not in a big bunch of fellow p***heads.

There is plenty in the argument that we British are simply obnoxious drinkers.

I have raced for 30 years in Ireland where they drink just as much but there is no ‘ruck culture’ over there.

Frenzy

Over the last seven days it has been the Galway Festival on the west coast and it is little less than a frenzy of drink and partying.

But at midnight you can stand in Galway high street with thousands spilling out of the pubs and there is no moronic chanting, no antagonism and not a whiff of violence in the air.

We will not change our drinking culture so we will just have to police courses properly. No drinking outside designated areas and straight out never to readmitted again for wrongdoers.

If the police do not to prosecute in certain cases after major brawls, courses might also look at taking private legal action against the culprits in order to recover any incidental costs and make life difficult for them.

Last Saturday after the King George at Ascot, Duke Of Marmalade returned in triumph to the winner’s enclosure. Standing there about two yards away were a couple of lads with pints in their hands.

They had wandered into the holy of holies unchallenged and just stood there supping while all the great and good of Ascot did nothing about it.

Let’s get the booze back in the bars before the behaviour puts people off coming racing for good.