YORK'S status as one of the premier venues for horse-racing was enhanced most regally with the news that it will host the Royal Ascot meeting in two years' time.

Ascot is having to go on the road - Louis Vuitton baggage in tow no doubt, dear-hearts - because of a planned redevelopment programme at the grand Berkshire course.

Along with York, Newbury, Newmarket and Cheltenham were the other front-runners in the race to stage the racing calendar's society event of the year. All started nervously in the stalls, all flaring their nostrils at the prospect of the big prize. After a blue riband dash, it was York who prevailed like the thoroughbred it is.

Rather than settling for a southern option, Ascot and all its attendant royal connections will now head north to Knavesmire - signalling just how highly-regarded York Racecourse is within the sport of kings, queens, sheikhs and a corral of various millionaires.

Upwards of 300,000 spectators are attracted to the five days of the Royal Ascot Festival, which gleans the patronage of our own Royal family. The Festival's acutely-anticipated arrival is not just a fillip to York racecourse, but to the entire city, whose economy can expect a massive upswing.

Esteemed Middleham trainer Mark Johnston - he has topped the standings at the previous two Royal Ascot meetings - was unequivocal in his York support. "It had to be York. There are two tracks in Britain that stand head and shoulders above the rest - Ascot and York."

Praise indeed and testament too to the foresight of those at the Knavesmire circuit, who, over the past decade have ensured refurbishment work has gone on greater than merely apace. Only this year the £20million Ebor Stand was opened to increase York's splendour in the turf.

Race-goers come to York in their tens-folds of thousands. In two years' time that will be in their hundreds of thousands.

So may be now is the time for that clichd old chestnut of York being the 'Ascot of the North' to be ditched. Maybe now it's time to declare: 'Ascot, the York of the south'.

IT'S not all 'yip, yippee, aye, eh' in the world of racing. The 2004 fixture-list has revealed no less than 1,340 fixtures, including 43 on a Sunday.

Apart from the traditional rest day of Good Friday, there will be racing on 320 days between February and December.

That will dramatically increase the work-load of the industry, and therefore beggars the question as to who will benefit the most as the phrase to do with whipping an expired horse comes to mind.

There is only so much prize money available, so it won't be owners and trainers. There's only so much a body can take, so it's unlikely to be jockeys and stable-hands.

While there will be even more chances to bet, the odds are against even more punters winning. And for the newspaper industry, just how many are going to print all those extra racecards? Indeed, it could mean that the trade's lone publication - the inestimable Racing Post - will end up with the density of a house-brick. If it gets delivered households will have to widen letter-boxes to parcel size or employ weight-lifters with a bent for domestic service.

So who will be the winners? Of course, the bookies, silly me.

SPEAKING of saturation, just wait until the new Sky Television deal for domestic football kicks in next season.

The proposed £1billion investment is poised to bring virtual wall-to-wall live football to the nation's dish and digital-fed screens.

Such intensive coverage feels like it is upon us now - and the 2003-04 Premiership campaign is still four days away from kicking a ball in anger, that's if you don't count the Contusion, sorry Community, Shield.

Surely it's a case of over-egging the pudding.

Updated: 08:41 Tuesday, August 12, 2003