At present three out of every four dollars a team earns - in ticket sales, product franchising, concessions, TV rights and so on - goes in players' wages. The owners want to cut that proportion to roughly one dollar in two.Predictably, the players have had none of it. The average NHL salary has tripled in a decade to $1.8m - so why kill the golden goose? The fault, the union argues, lies not with greedy players but with irresponsible owners, recklessly outbidding each other to buy success. Some franchises lose less by not playing hockey than playing it. Plainly something has to be done.For owners, the mantra has been "cost certainty," in other words a "hard" salary cap tied to total revenue. At least two teams, in Ottawa and Buffalo, have brushed with bankruptcy. Since the NHL locked out the players last September in its bid to impose a salary cap, 824 of the scheduled 1,230 games in the 2004/2005 season have already been lost.

And if this dismal scenario unfolds as expected, he may well also be announcing the demise of the world's premier ice hockey league in its present form.In a sense, the commissioner will be acknowledging the inevitable. Their combined losses last year topped $270m (£143m), on total revenue of $2bn. It is a crisis not just of money, but of the way the sport is played.The financial d?cle is simply stated Only 11 of the 30 NHL teams are profitable. Even with a deal in extremis, the most that could be salvaged would be a regular season of 28 (instead of 82) games, followed by play-offs squeezed in by the end of June.But long before the training camps were shut 154 days ago, it was plain the league was facing a crisis unprecedented in its 88-year history.

So this, finally, is it. Miracles do happen, but even divine intervention may not suffice if the National Hockey League is to avoid the previously unthinkable - the first-ever loss by a US sport of an entire season as a result of a labour dispute So this, finally, is it. The Butterwick Kid, the 7-2 second favourite, passed the post five lengths clear but had taken the hurdle course into the straight after the third fence. Runner-up Red Rampage (4-1) was awarded the first prize instead.Tate was suspended for 14 days for taking the wrong course and a further four for continuing in the race. The jockey said: "I'd walked the course and the last fence was to be dolled off, but during the race an official was waving his arms and I thought there was something else wrong and I was guided on to the hurdle course."* Today's two jumps meetings at Musselburgh and Leicester were under threat from frost last night and both are subject to morning inspections.GRAND NATIONAL (Ladbrokes betting): 12-1 Amberleigh House, Clan Royal, Silver Birch; 20-1 First Gold, Grey Abbey, Hedgehunter, Lord Atterbury, Timbera; 25-1 Forest Gunner, Joly Bey, Monty's Pass, Royal Auclair, Strong Resolve; 33-1 Ad Hoc, Colnel Rayburn, Frenchman's Creek, Gunther McBride, Innox, Jurancon, Just In Debt, Le Coudray, Longshanks, Puntal, Lord Of Illusion, Marcus de Berlais; 40-1 others..