Colm Greaves: How does racing bounce back from its horror year?

While Rachael Blackmore provided racing’s feelgood story of 2021, it couldn’t mask a disastrous year for a sport that was constantly mired in scandal.

Jockey Robbie Dunne leaving the British Horseracing Authority Headquarters in London after being banned for 18 months. Picture: Yui Mok

Given the heartache her family inflict on the poor woman in a normal year, 1992 must have really been some class of nightmare for Britain’s Queen Elizabeth. In her end of term speech to the great and good of London, she lamented that “it is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure. In the words of one of my more sympathetic correspondents, it has turned out to be an annus horribilis.”

Her sentiments might resonate with the great and good of the horse racing across the two islands this new year as they post-mortem the corpse of 2021, which from a public relations perspective has been an indisputably horrible 12 months.