Sydney loves a circus. This one’s a doozy …

The Daily Telegraph even went so far as to map the stewards’ room (“a stenographer will be in the sixth seat on the left”). Yet for all the column inches devoted to Gai v Singo (starring Tom, Robbie, Joey, Eddie and Robbo), for whatever was and wasn’t said, for whatever instructions a trainer gave to a jockey, and said to her bookmaker husband and son, the facts remain the same.

As one gambling industry insider writes (reproduced in Crikey):

“Racing integrity issues aside, what Tom Waterhouse has done is far from responsible. It’s oversaturation and an unbearably pervasive brand of promotion.”

And as leading thoroughbred owner Peter Horwitz says in The Sydney Morning Herald (not online):

“Racing’s hierarchy will be hard pressed to ignore the elephant in the room. Although not directly on the short-term agenda, it has to be dealt with. The elephant in question is the marriage of a leading trainer and a leading bookmaker. To add fuel to the fire, their son is also a leading bookie.”

Plenty of elephants, in fact. None of which are being spoken about in the Racing NSW stewards’ inquiry today.