By Cornelius Lysaght BBC Sport racing correspondent

Plans are afoot to change the way horses are entered for the Derby to ensure it remains the greatest Flat race in the world.

Epsom has agreed to look at the problems with the current trial system, which have been particularly highlighted in the Spring of 2002.

At the moment there are eight trials in England, with one or two others in France and Ireland, and there are three ways of entering a horse for the Derby.

Johnston has called for changes to the trial system

One is to enter the horse as a yearling, at an initial cost of £3,000.

The second is to enter the horse in the April of the year of the race, but that requires an initial outlay of £9,000.

Finally an entry can be made the week before the race, but that costs £90,000 - almost double the value of many of the horses.

Basically the problem is that it is too risky to enter a yearling because it might be useless, but it's too expensive by the time a trainer knows whether the horse is good enough.

This has been brought into sharp focus this year as a number of the trial winners have not been entered for the Derby itself, and they have all been trained by the same person.

Risky

Mark Johnston's Simeon won the Sandown Classic Trial, while Fight Your Corner took the Chester Vase last week and on Saturday Bandari won the Lingfield Derby Trial.

 Bandari wins Lingfield Derby
 Fight Your Corner triumphs

But he takes the view that it is too risky to enter a yearling and too expensive thereafter.

Some people are fed up of Johnston apparently bleating on about this issue, but he's absolutely right.

The trials are effectively like the semi-finals of a football competition - one in which the winners are not allowed free entry to the final.

Fight Your Corner took the Chester Vase

This is plainly silly and trial winners should at least qualify for some form of special attention, so entry to the Derby will cost them but not a prohibitive amount.

For the Derby to be considered the world's greatest race it needs Europe's best horses.

Epsom must introduce some form of wildcard system for the trial winners, and they are ready to discuss exactly that.

Racing operations like Sheikh Mohammed's Godolphin and John Magnier's Coolmore can afford to enter everything.

But changes must take place if the race is to remain open to all-comers, and not just become the preserve of the extremely wealthy.

If we are going to have races billed as trials they have to mean something.

If you win one you have to get something in terms of at least a push towards a place in the Derby.

It will also give a lift to the trials themselves if there is a place in the Derby at stake, because in all honesty some of them are pretty dull at the moment.