YOU CAN'T fit a quart into a pint pot, so the saying goes.

It’s an idiom that’s been used to highlight near-impossible tasks for centuries but it’s the job racing’s rulers face as they try to condense a seven-month Flat season into an ever-diminishing space.

The BHA have already outlined plans for when racing does return – hopefully sometime in May – so it can hit the ground running when given the green light by the government.

Tentative dates for the Classics have been suggested. The two Guineas are penciled in for early June with the Derby and Oaks coming a week later. Royal Ascot remains in its scheduled slot smack in between the Classic weekends.

With crowds unlikely to be allowed back on tracks until deep into the summer at the earliest, there is surely no need for the Royal meeting to stretch out over the full five days.

For starters, the chances are that there will be little more than a week between the Guineas and the start of Ascot on June 16.

That renders both the St James’s Palace Stakes and the Coronation Stakes pretty pointless with none of the main contenders from the Newmarket Classics likely to turn out again so quickly.

The myriad of races for two-year-olds could also be sliced. There’s unlikely to be time before Ascot to run too many juvenile contests so it throws up the prospect of ‘lesser’ contests like the Windsor Castle and the Albany Stakes being packed full of horses that had previously failed to even hit the frame.

If overseas horses, especially those trained in Ireland, are banned from travelling it would seem strange to hold so many races for juveniles.

It might even make sense to move the Coventry Stakes and the Queen Mary to Ascot’s King George later in the season when the races would have more meaning.

With the Group 3 Jersey Stakes – often a race for three-year-olds that either weren’t good enough in the Guineas or failed to stay – another contest that will have lost its significance, shaving a day or two from Flat racing’s greatest meeting would help stabilise the rest of the season.

The King Edward VII Stakes and the Ribblesdale – usually the next port of call for three-year-olds who came up short in the Oaks and the Derby – could serve as trials for the Epsom Classics.

The top sprints, the King’s Stand and the Diamond Jubilee, could sit happily and the valuable handicaps are likely to be over subscribed.

With the top races for older horses like the Princes Of Wales’s Stakes and the Gold Cup the meeting would lose none of its quality if condensed into three days.

Putting on eight races a day would help but that would be dependent on stabling space and the logistics of implementing the ‘social distancing’ restrictions that are likely to still be in place in some form.

Holding meetings behind closed doors would also lessen the necessity to stage the big races at weekends.

The prospect of the Eclipse, July Cup or King George being run on a Tuesday or a Thursday has to be considered – especially as most of us are finding it hard to remember what day it is during lockdown.

It would help ease a congested first few months into the rest of the season with a return to somewhere near a normal fixture list kicking in between Glorious Goodwood in late July and York’s Ebor Meeting in mid-August.

Of course, the return of any action depends on the government and its restrictions aimed at tackling the coronavirus pandemic.

A return of racing ‘behind closed doors’ sometime in May certainly looks possible and it cannot come soon enough for those whose livelihoods depend on the sport.

The financial impact cannot be underestimated with the repercussions of any prolonged shut down likely to be too much for some.

It’s encouraging that the BHA seem to be planning for a resumption as soon as it’s considered safe to do so and it has come up with a number of sensible suggestions to ensure a smooth return to racing at the earliest opportunity. Fields sizes are likely to be limited, cards would contain more races than usual and tinkering with handicap conditions to make sure there are as many opportunities for horses as possible.

It might seem inappropriate to start talking about racing returning when so many people are still being tragically affected by coronavirus but, quite simply, the ramifications for an industry worth around £3.5billion to the British economy and supporting in the region of 85,000 jobs are massive.

Racing needs to get the timing right for the return, no doubt. It’s a fine balancing act for the BHA but, for the health of the sport and the financial survival of those who depend on it, a resumption in whatever form needs to come as soon as it is realistically possible.