The Mirror's Chief Racing Correspondent says the Final Demand saga throws up worrying questions about racecourse security

Fancied Cheltenham Festival runner fails dope test — but the CCTV footage has gone missing. It sounds like something from a Dick Francis novel, doesn’t it?

But it actually happened.

Willie Mullins’ Final Demand, second in the Brown Advisory Novices’ Chase last March, tested positive for an anaesthetic administered for an injury to his jaw. Last Monday, an independent judiciary panel disqualified the horse and fined Mullins £1,100.

But Cheltenham racecourse, unable to provide CCTV footage of Final Demand’s stay in the track’s Charles Turner yard between March 8 and 11, was hit with a £5,000 penalty.

While the conspiracy theorists’ imagination went into overdrive, panel chair Sarah Crowther KC was satisfied the issue did not involve any skulduggery. But there is plenty to learn from this embarrassing episode.

Cheltenham hired a third party to look after its CCTV surveillance but, when it requested the footage, was told that the hard drive containing it had been misplaced.

But why did they need to request it at all? Why weren’t all CCTV recordings shared with the racecourse as a matter of routine?

If you employ a firm to provide a security system at your home, digital footage is available for you to view. The idea that, in 2026, footage of racecourse stables would be unavailable – as if someone had spilled coffee on a VHA videotape half a century ago – is absurd.

If racecourses can’t provide failsafe security at meetings like the Cheltenham Festival, we really are in trouble.

■ The battle for the trainers’ title has understandably taken up many column inches.

With Aidan O’Brien leading Andrew Balding by just over £80,000, the race looks set to go all the way to the wire.

But the wire needs to be moved.

O’Brien is set to have his final runners in Britain when he seeks a record-extending 13th win in Doncaster’s William Hill Futurity on Saturday.

After that, it’s up to Balding to claw back the leeway with runners on the all-weather in November and December.

Imagine that we go into Christmas and a runner from Kingsclere lands the 0-75 handicap at Wolverhampton that propels Balding to the top of the table.

Who will care? We’ll be thinking of the King George. Leopardstown. The Welsh National.

Why not just run the trainers’ championship during the turf season and hand out the baubles at Town Moor next weekend?

It might not be the perfect solution but it’s infinitely better than what we’ve got.

■ I must admit, I was one of the doubters before the first Champions Day was run at Ascot in 2011.

But, 15 years on, with the Champion Stakes and Queen Elizabeth II Stakes the headline acts of five Group 1 races, you’d be a tough audience not to give the project an emphatic thumbs up.

Even Longchamp on Arc day has something to think about.