Sunday racing can work. More than 16,000 people at Cheltenham this week were happy proof of that, as were the family-orientated full houses at such summer venues as Chester and Perth. But one fact remains unarguable - it is not fulfilling its original aim in Britain, because far too much of it is mediocre to the point of unwatchable.

This was one of several reasons to feel depressed, last week, at news that racing had scrapped its plan to leave four Sundays blank in 2009 and instead filled them with the usual meagre and unmemorable fare.

A lot of research had gone into the fixture furlough. It formed one of the principal planks of the extensive fixture review and was amply justified on the grounds that it gave the certainty of a few free Sundays to jockeys, trainers, stable staff and everyone else connected with the running of horses.

Not allowed, apparently. The bookmakers were having none of it.

As if they do not have enough betting products, from the exotic to the barely believable, to keep their shop customers happy, they kicked up such a fuss about racing's attempts to take four days a year off that it put the entire levy deal at risk.

It seems that the British Horseracing Authority was in a cleft stick. Stay true to its principles - and to the wishes of its constituents - and the certainty of future funding collapses. Extraordinarily, the betting industry still has this hold over racing. Shamefully, it still chooses to use it selfishly.

We will not notice any difference next year, with the usual endless run of largely anonymous Sunday meetings. But plenty who work in racing might just have appreciated the difference if a worthy initiative had not been held to ransom.