A SPLENDID GLORIOUS GOODWOOD FOR RYAN MOORE

Rod Fabricius said: "I believe that possibly quite a few stayed away last year because they'd gone instead to Ascot to experience the new development.

Fortunately, last week's figures show that Goodwood is very much back on track in terms of attendance, and we're up to our customary six figures. We carried out market research on both Tuesday and Saturday, and those findings will make for interesting reading.

"Similar festival meetings have witnessed a migration of attendance from the first few days to a concentration in the last day or two, but we appear to have bucked that trend."

He added: "Inevitably we can make some improvements in such areas as speed of arrival into car parks, provision of courtesy transport, provision of lavatories, sufficiency of furniture and seating, and speedy service of good value food and drink. They are the essentials to an enjoyable day out."

He was not regretting the substitution of BBC TV in favour of Channel 4, and hailed the latter's first coverage of Glorious Goodwood as a"massive success".

He said: "The Channel 4 team were enthusiastic, creative and got behind the scenes to give the viewers a fascinating insight of what goes on here. In addition, they promoted the meeting in the build-up over recent weeks, via The Morning Line and Saturday afternoon programmes, and, of course, that wouldn't have happened with the BBC."

For full feature see West Sussex Gazette August 8