Has summer racing become a beer garden for the dregs and oafs of society? Is it no longer possible to enjoy a civilised day at the races for fear of being caught up in a drunken brawl? For these are the fearful assumptions that might be made from recent columns and letters in the trade press.

The prompt for such reaction is indisputable fact. There have been fights at racetracks recently, both at Sandown Park on Eclipse day and on Newmarket's July course the following Friday. They were isolated incidents but regrettable and fuelled by drink. Quite rightly, they aroused disapproval.

But the response has been too shrill. Received wisdom now has it that racing is the latest arena of choice for those who go to an event simply to get drunk and make trouble. Further, the impression is given that this is the fault of racecourses for daring to indulge in marketing designed to attract an audience from beyond the sport's relatively narrow parish.

By extension, the doomsayers see a correlation between the music nights and Ladies' Days of modern racecourse life, and the instances of crowd trouble that have drawn headlines. And this is taking things a blimpish step too far.

Like most others whose job or inclination is to go racing frequently, I have sometimes been exasperated, occasionally even appalled, by crowd behaviour. Quite why those whose purpose seems simply to quaff lager in unimaginable volume choose to pay a sizeable admission fee to do it, rather than indulging for free in their local pub, is beyond me.

A personal view is that venues may be unable to restrict degrees of drinking but they should certainly restrict the areas where it is drunk. Inebriates surging around the viewing steps of grandstands waving pints - even in plastic vessels - form a serious deterrent to the enjoyment of the peaceful majority.

But it is important to keep such concerns in context. Anyone who has experienced the feral, loathing atmosphere of many football grounds or who, like me, has witnessed the moronic antics of the Western Terrace at the Headingley Test, will still consider racing an oasis of calm.

The idea that imaginative marketing is somehow responsible for outbreaks of hooliganism is not only fanciful but insulting to racecourses whose businesses have been sustained and revived by it.

When Jockey Club Racecourses, owners of many of the flagship venues, announced their latest financial figures yesterday, two themes were evident. It is increasingly the big events - Cheltenham, Aintree, the Derby - that people want to attend. No surprise there, then, for it simply reflect trends and preferences throughout sport.

Most racegoers only attend once a year, the sport's most depressing statistic. And if they come racing outside those elite occasions, it will usually be because there is a subsidiary reason to do so.

For instance, Newmarket's racing population may initially have resented the introduction of high-profile bands at Friday evening meetings but the raging success of the Newmarket Nights (another 21,000 sell-out last week) justified and enabled the sensitive redevelopment project on the July Course.

Sandown, meanwhile, filled its cavernous stands for an evening meeting for the first time in memory last Thursday. Girls Aloud were the big draw but the crowd engaged with the racing, too, roaring the runners home to create a vibrant atmosphere in what has too often been a morgue.

Ladies' Days, though now almost comically commonplace, have been beneficial in a different sense. It does not work every time but the passable theory is that an influx of well-dressed women has a civilising effect. Market Rasen's Summer Plate day, last Saturday, adopted the theme and enjoyed an increased crowd and enhanced atmosphere.

The point of all this is that racing cannot afford to be too prudish or reactionary. We would all like to see stands routinely full of folk drawn purely by the love of a good horse, but there are not nearly enough such people or such horses to go round. Most of us would also appreciate a return to the days before bawdy, beery exhibitionism at sporting events. But we should not pretend that racing can exist as a haven from all the ills of modern society.

Not so long ago, the notion of the best jumps trainers in the land being grouped in Somerset would have been laughable.

Lambourn was the power base of the sport and there seemed no cause to doubt it remaining so. But Martin Pipe, followed by Paul Nicholls and Philip Hobbs, changed all that.

So perhaps we should all be taking the latest geographical trend a little more seriously. At present, the leader of the trainers' championship, and three of the top nine, are based in Wales. A fourth example, Tim Vaughan, is rising fast and the Welsh quartet has acquired 57 winners in this fledgling season.

One might dismiss it as a seasonal accident, a coincidence of yards that focus on summer jumping. After all, the excellent Peter Bowen headed Nicholls by winning his third successive Summer Plate last Saturday, while Evan Williams has long been known to farm races on quick ground.

But both these trainers are now intent on wider horizons. Bowen's yard is full and he has had proper money to spend at last, while Williams has had a thorough clearout as he attempts to build on his first Cheltenham Festival winner.

There is a further factor. Dai Walters, who owns Saturday's big-race winner, Snoopy Loopy, is also the financial force behind Ffos Las, which opens its gates as the 61st British racecourse next June. Once they have a local track to patronise, the progress of the Celtic fringe may be unstoppable.