Poor procedures and ridiculous rules do racing a great and damaging disservice

The problem is not that seven jockeys failed to stop when a yellow flag was waved at Sandown on Saturday. Nor is it the ten-day bans the stewards dished out. It is not even the Little Rory Mac saga which got Twitter in an awful tizzy. Or the game of musical races and split screen squinting that Racing TV played on Sunday. It is the fact a professional sport continues to look incredibly amateurish.

Racing has the canny knack of shooting itself in the foot and there have been bullets flying through toes all over the place of late.

You can make up your own mind about what has been the most humiliating part of the last week, but the bans handed out to the Sandown riders really got my goat.