A couple of months ago the British Horseracing Authority published an expensive report on how they can best meet the challenge of marketing their sport in the coming years. It cost a quarter of a million of their finest English pounds, yet only a couple of vague conclusions linger from the whole exercise. Firstly, racing needs to be more democratic in the way it appeals to the general public. Secondly, it also needs to be demystified so that blokes called Ben, who know little or nothing about horses, can feel more relaxed at race meetings.

So let's hope that Citizen Ben wasn't at Ascot this week, watching owners, many of them looking like refugees from the top of a wedding cake, lead their horses proudly into the winners enclosure. Patriotic sounding classical music blasting from the sound system and the ring announcer rapturously hoping that, "It may please your Majesty, your Royal Highnesses, My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen..."

Democratic and demystified? Royal Ascot is about as democratic as a general election in North Korea and is far more mysterious, but it is a week that always adds to the gaiety of nations and leaves memorable hoofprints on the flat season. 2009 will go down as a vintage edition for many reasons including these small slices from the week that was.

Performance of the week

Dead heat between Aidan O'Brien and Yeats. Begrudgers, and there are some out there, often assert that their granny could train a Derby winner if she had the backing of Coolmore and the facilities of Ballydoyle. Another nail was driven firmly into the coffin lid of this myth when Yeats became the first ever eight-year-old to win the Gold Cup and the first ever horse to win it four times. The inscrutible O'Brien normally keeps any public displays of emotion at long arms length, but this day was different. "I've never felt pressure for any race before and this horse was the only time," he said afterwards, which is revealing for the man who nursed Istabraq to four Cheltenham triumphs. But the Yeats four-timer is even more impressive, not least because keeping a stallion this sweet for this long is much more difficult than managing an amiable old gelding. Five years ago Yeats was ante-post favourite for the Epsom Derby until a back problem intervened, so for O'Brien to regroup and mature him into probably the greatest stayer that ever lived is a touch of pure genius. Now try get dear old Gran to beat that.

Crisis? What Crisis? of the Week

Godolphin. One of the more poignant images of the week was a TV camera shot of Sheikh Mohammed watching from the throng around the presentation stage as his brother, Sheikh Hamdan, picked up yet another Group One trophy, the Coronation Stakes, on Friday. Although Godolphin also had a winner on Wednesday, the stable's recent success rate is wildy disproportionate to the amount of capital invested in the operation. It's hard to identify a single cause of the problem, but sometimes it feels like watching an uncoached golfer on the driving range. How does he expect to get better by practising bad habits over and over again?

In the first decade of Godolphin they had 24 winners at Royal Ascot. They've had only four in the last four years and some of their results last week must have been soul-destroying. For instance, on Tuesday, Gladiatorus, one of the highest rated horses in the world, trailed in sixth of nine in the Queen Anne Stakes on his first outing for his new stable. A day later Donativum could finish only fifth in the Jersey Stakes despite being good enough to win the Breeders Cup Juvenile Turf last winter when trained by John Gosden.

There is no shortage of opinions as to what needs to be done. Start buying Coolmore sired yearlings again. Diversify trainers. Stop wintering in Dubai. Reduce the huge number of horses in the stable. But Sheikh Mohammed is a loyal and persistant man. "It is good," he told BBC viewers before racing on Tuesday. "I am very happy with it. Things are moving and we are looking to the future." Let's hope it gets better soon.

TV Channel of the Week

Anybody but the Beeb. Two weeks ago Sir Peter O'Sullevan and Frankie Dettori were among a representative industry group that handed in a petition at number 10 Downing Street in an attempt to pressurise the BBC into broadcasting more horse racing than say, curling or crown green bowling. After watching their efforts from Ascot this week, one thought springs to mind. Why? Of course there's no argument but that fashion and frivolity are integral to the pageant but for most of the week it was hard to see a horse for the hats. In a mercenary attempt to attract the floating viewer they let their fashion expert, James Sherwood, bitchily dominate the airtime. James is the sort of chap whose charms would be lost on the pie and chips room at Kilbeggan and when you throw in a ridiculously contrived serial feature about a racing school, Willie Carson, and a sniggering John Parrott, it's a wonder that any racing fans watched any of the coverage at all. Maybe that was the objective.

Invading Nation of the Week

America. Before Royal Ascot started this week, the only American-trained winner of a horse race in Britain was some nondescript jumper who picked up a minor prize in the early 1990s. By the end of day two, Wes Ward, who is not even in the first rank of US trainers, had saddled Strike the Tiger and Jealous Again to win the Windsor Castle and Queen Mary respectively. In doing so he could well have pioneered the beginning of a new balance in international racing. American two-year-olds are trained hard early and taught to run from the stalls as though pursued by the angry hounds of hell. This is in direct contrast to the gently progressive introduction top European youngsters are afforded and if the Yanks start coming in big numbers there will hardly be a juvenile race safe this side of September. It will be interesting to see if Ward's compatriots absorb the new lessons – their horses will travel and can win on turf.

Manoeuvre of the Week

White Van Man. When Johhny Murtagh recently accepted an honorary role as Ambassador for Irish Flat racing some wondered if he was losing some of the famous fire in the belly. They needn't have worried. Murtagh has been anything but diplomatic in his riding in Britain this year and has been picking up bans for aggressive riding regularly this season. He got a couple more last week including a five-day holiday for a dive to the rails on Kayf Arimis in the the Ascot Stakes which should only be shown after the children have been put to bed. But even this wasn't enough to win Johnny the award for manoeuvre of the week. That goes to the driver of a white prison van who crashed into a decorative horse drawn carriage just outside the course on Wednesday evening. Happily nobody was seriously hurt, but all the BHA reports in the world couldn't have invented a more suitable metaphor to describe the clash of the old and the new. It was a piece of poetic symbolism that even Yeats himself would have struggled to write.