We are five months and two reports on from the collapse of last autumn's race-fixing court case, then unfittingly dubbed “The Fallon Trial”, but still more questions than answers linger - not least, who was to blame for the whole debacle. Even now, we are not done.

On December 7, 2007, Mr Justice Forbes ordered the jury to deliver a verdict of not guilty on the six men - jockeys Kieren Fallon, Fergal Lynch and Darren Williams, along with Miles Rodgers, Shaun Lynch and Philip Sherkle - who had 17 months earlier been charged with conspiracy to defraud Betfair customers.

From the wreckage, the City of London Police and the British Horseracing Authority (BHA) attempted to emerge battered but unbowed. Each commissioned a review of its procedures, the former internally and the latter by an independent but paid investigator. Each found things that could have been done differently and better. Yet each concluded that they got a lot of it right.

If many of the constructive conclusions have been lost amid the vast numbers of pages and dense language they contain, that is hardly surprising. A “no case to answer verdict”, this time for the prosecutors as well as the defendants, is not good enough for a sport whose reputation was sullied without resolution.

However, the police review did independently confirm what the BHA always claimed: that no funding was promised towards the cost of the investigation (although it was discussed), that Rodgers and not Fallon was the focus of the information passed to the police, that racing's regulators were kept at arm's length during the investigation and played no part in the choice of Ray Murrihy, the Australian steward, as an expert witness.

The funding allegation - among others - was aired in court without sufficient analysis and therefore stuck long after the trial fell, calling into question the performance of Jonathan Caplan QC, the prosecution counsel.

On the police side, it still irks that the faces publicly fronting the investigation changed from high to lesser-ranking officers. In late 2004 and early 2005, Detective Chief Superintendent Steve Wilmott was described as leading the inquiry and consistently quoted on its progress. He travelled to Australia to meet Murrihy, whose ill-judged selection exposed the weaknesses of the prosecution case.

Yet, for reasons not entirely explained by internal personnel changes, a significant amount of responsibility came to rest on Acting Detective Inspector Mark Manning, a relatively junior officer, who was the focus of much cross-examination in court. Accordingly, his name was most associated with the collapse of the case.

He and other officers failed to disclose evidence and the team produced an inadequate log of its inquiry. The review finds no wilful intent on their part but rather a procedural breakdown associated with the volume of evidence and multiplicity of defence counsels. However, at no stage does it address the police's evident incomprehension of racing and betting.

This undermines the confident assertion of Commander Patrick Rice, who led the review, that his force would not be put off investigating another such case if it involved possible deception of the public. “That can only be to the benefit of horse racing,” he said. The sport may beg to differ. Like the others before it, this case strongly suggests that any prosecution based on race-reading, that is proving a motive by analysing a jockey's ride, is doomed because it is open to so many interpretations.

In fact, greater legislative powers held by the BHA and the inauguration of the Gambling Commission mean that, where corruption is alleged to have occurred in future, one or both of these bodies - without the police - would progress an investigation focussing on evidence not based on the unfolding of a race.

However, this requires all bookmakers to provide full access to their clients' betting records when concerns arise, which is not the case at present. It also requires the Professional Jockeys' Association to ensure that its members register every mobile phone in their usage and fully co-operate when the BHA requests their call records. Again, this is not yet the case.

But it is surely impractical that the BHA should press on with its own disciplinary process on those putatively rare occasions when action is pending by the Gambling Commission or the police. This was recommended by Dame Elizabeth Neville, who wrote the review of racing's security operations, and appears fraught with problems.

Her more desirable recommendations - including a slimmer rulebook, improved security on all racecourses, a clearer and more efficient structure of the licensing, disciplinary and security departments - are already being implemented.

Finally, the publication of the two reviews does not necessarily mean an end to this episode. The BHA retained the right to press its own disciplinary action against its licensed persons, regardless of the collapse of the case, once it had reviewed the evidence. It came out in court that Lynch admitted betting via a disqualified person, Rodgers, with whom Williams also associated. Fallon infringed phone regulations.

But the Crown Prosecution Service has been slow to relinquish the relevant documentation to the point that the Freedom of Information Act needed to be cited. The BHA now hopes soon to receive the data it has long requested. The debate is to follow on whether, regardless of its contents, racing's regulators have more to win or lose by pursuing the matter further.