BRITISH racing really is its own worst enemy at times. The sport there has an uncanny habit of blowing up tiny and sometimes non-existent issues into significant points of debate, with the mainstream inevitably being drawn in for a disapproving look. When I write ‘British racing’, I don’t just mean the British Horseracing Authority, I also mean the British racing media and indeed the British racing public.

This habit has directly resulted in some of the biggest self-driven controversies in British racing in recent years. For example, the watering down of the Aintree Grand National in an effort to appease what are in the main enemies of horse racing has put the mainstream focus on injury and deaths in the race more than ever. More recently, the remarkably incompetent handling of a non-existent whip problem has kept the subject in the headlines for over three years, giving the impression to the mainstream that it is a welfare issue when it absolutely is not.