By Cornelius Lysaght BBC Sport racing correspondent

From 1 January, or thereabouts, a new treatment on an established name will appear on our racecards.

Andrew Balding, who by then will be 30, takes over the reins at the historic Kingsclere training centre, near Newbury, from his father Ian.

Balding junior is already long odds on to keep up the dynasty's fine name. Pedigree alone could do it.

Ian, who is retiring, has been a doyen of his profession for more than 35 years and the family drips with racing heritage.

Andrew is a modern-minded person but is fiercely proud of his birthright and all it stands for

There is Ian's wife, Emma, a renowned breeder and purchaser of bloodstock, and their other child, Clare, of BBC television fame.

Add to that uncle Toby Balding, the trainer; another uncle, William Huntingdon, the ex-trainer; and various Hastings grandparents and great-grandparents.

Balding junior will not be short of advice.

But there are plenty of other reasons too for believing that a successful transition is assured, one being that there is not really going to be a transition at all.

Ian, 63, is as full of energy now as he was when guiding the great Mill Reef's career in the 1970s.

And apart from his name disappearing from the training licence, he will continue to play a big part in the whole show.

That feeling of continuity is underlined by the unchanging nature of Kingsclere, with its lush pastures and rich downland.

Andrew is a modern-minded person but is fiercely proud of his birthright and all it stands for.

He does not, frankly, have all that much to prove.

After a spell learning the ropes under the shrewd tutelage of Jack and Lynda Ramsden, at their base in North Yorkshire, he returned home.

Andrew Balding is a forward thinker

He was given responsibility for particular horses, and within a very short space of time was bringing fresh impetus to a tried and trusted formula.

Two victories in the impossibly competitive Cesarewitch Handicap at Newmarket, with the fragile Top Cees and with Distant Prospect, received many plaudits.

So did his skilful handling of Firebreak who won, appropriately, the Mill Reef Stakes at Newbury.

There is more. Whether it be the 2000 Guineas, the Welsh National (in which Gunner Welburn, the favourite, is expected to be Ian's last big runner) or a game of scrabble, the Baldings hate to lose.

Andrew has certainly inherited that fierce competitive streak, sometimes displaying a will-to-win so intense that it could belong to his great friend Tony McCoy.

With a stable bubbling after (numerically) its best season, and numbers swelled by the combined attraction of youth and tradition, it is little wonder that all at Kingsclere are expecting a very happy New Year.