No-one has ever emerged from the womb wearing a trilby - racing's future survival hangs on pursuing a young audience

Having not penned a column for three weeks, it feels right to return with some positivity. With my latest experience of the Melbourne Cup Carnival still fresh in the mind, that positivity is easy to find.

Being in Melbourne during Cup week will inevitably make a racing fan love racing even more. Everything you have heard about the carnival – and you have heard plenty about it from me – remains true. The city is filled with racing chat and racing functions. Almost every television news bulletin will have at least one racing story, while the most popular newspapers have page after page of racing coverage, including at the front end of each edition. To be a racing fan in Melbourne at Cup time is to feel like one of the many, not one of the few.

This year was even better than usual, with Flemington riding a wave of enhanced popularity. Attendances for the four racedays grew by a combined total of just under nine per cent, the TV audience increased and betting turnover remained strong. There was a buzz around Australia's premier racecourse. That, in no small part, was due to the noticeably large number of young people at the track.