Horse racing in Australia has been on the wane for at least half a century. In that time, the sport has slipped from a mainstream phenomenom to little more than a spring passtime.

And while racing boasts a very loyal fanbase of punters and industry participants, many have moved their love of racing away from the track and positioned it somewhere at home, probably in front of a computer screen and dedicated television broadcast.

These 21st century luxuries have increasingly made a day at the races seem like an incredible waste of time and money for lovers of the sport.

But the inability of race clubs to draw racing fans to the track may be the least of the sport's problems.

Afterall, when there is more chance of spotting a 200/1 winner than a teenager actually interested in the sport; when the public bar at any Saturday metropolitan meeting has been taken over by a bunch of drunks who wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a donkey and a thoroughbred, and when the Bagot Handicap meeting at Flemington has been relegated to the eighth most important sporting event on New Year's Day, you know the sport is paling into insignificance.

But isn't it lucky for racing's administrators that they now have two greats to showcase their sport? If ever racing needed to call on a great horse, it is now and in world champion Black Caviar and Sydney supermare More Joyous, racing has two horses that can raise the sport's profile up to where it used to be.

So now is the time to announce a match race. And in doing so, save racing.

Here's my suggestion for the date, venue and race details: April 23, 1400 Metres, Randwick, Set Weights.

Sure the AFL substitute-rule backlash has been interesting and Saint Benny declaring he wants to be a saint no more is heart-breaking for Dragons fans but a $2.5million winner-take-all match race between the undefeated champion of the world and the new-age Sunline has the potential to be the most intriguing sport story of not only April, but the whole of 2011.

And with the Golden Slipper only a day away, it is just the tonic the ATC's Sydney Carnival needs. 

Just think about the hype the race would create: Can Black Caviar run 1400 metres? Does Cav have one more big run in her this preparation? Can More Joyous lead and make it a staying test? If More Joyous wins will she win the Horse of the Year title ahead of Black Caviar and So You Think? If Caviar wins will her owners be cashed up and ready to make an offer to challenge Rocket Man and Jay Jay The Jet Plane? What will the ATC do to ensure the 50,000 that turn up become fans for life?

Last week Peter Moody, the trainer of Black Caviar, and John Singleton, the owner of More Joyous, conceded that a match race was off the cards. 

For Moody, running the mare on the last day of the Sydney Carnival is not part of the plans, while Singleton wants to tip More Joyous out for a spell after the Doncaster. Both Moody and Singleton have touted a match race as a possibility in 2012.

While good arguments for not running the race have been presented by each camp, these are far outweighed by the benefits of a match race for the racing industry.

Singleton has invested a lot of money into racing and in return he has been gifted victories in all of Sydney's great races, notwithstanding the great horse Strawberry Road, who ran in the Arc De Triomphe - and more memorably still, Belle Du Jour's unbelievable Golden Slipper miracle. And racing has brought Peter Moody a lot fame and fortune, as well as world-champion sprinter Black Caviar.

It is time these two men came together and gave something back to the sport that has given them so much.

One thing is for sure, even if the match race turned out to be a fizzer, the build-up would be something to behold. And the Sport of Kings - for a day, at least - would have been given a chance to save itself.