Tom Morgan is being lined up to appear as an expert witness for the defence at the rehearing of the Jim Best case this week. A former champion jump jockey in Ireland, Morgan will offer his own interpretation of the rides given to two Best-trained horses last December – it being alleged by racing’s ruling body that both horses were stopped on Best’s instructions.
When the matter was first heard in February, much of the focus was on the ability and credibility of the jockey Paul John, who was well beaten on both Echo Brava and Missile Man. Having been found by both sets of stewards to be in breach of the rules requiring sufficient effort, John claimed that Best had told him to stop the two horses. Best denied that and accused John of lying in order to deflect blame from himself.
Much of this week’s five-day rehearing is expected to be given over to interpretation of the rides that John gave the two horses. There was no expert testimony at the first hearing but Morgan will now provide the disciplinary panel with the benefit of his own view on the subject.
Morgan shared the Irish title with Frank Berry at the end of the 1985-86 season, when both rode 53 winners. He was attached to the Dessie Hughes yard at that time and won the 1982 Supreme Novice Hurdle for the trainer aboard Miller Hill, becoming the first jockey to ride into Cheltenham’s new winner’s enclosure.
Later, Morgan based himself in England as first jockey to John Edwards, for whom he won a Queen Mother Champion Chase on Pearlyman. He was leading rider at the 1989 Cheltenham Festival but may be best remembered for a hard-fought defeat that year, as he was second on the 25-1 shot Yahoo when Desert Orchid achieved a famous victory in the Gold Cup. Morgan then rode over to pat the winner in a moment subsequently described by the Guardian writer Neil Clark as “the most beautiful sporting gesture I have ever witnessed”.
The British Horseracing Authority declined to comment on the eve of the rehearing but it is believed the regulator will not field an expert witness of its own. John is expected to be the only prosecution witness, as he was at the first hearing, and the BHA will argue that his testimony, taken together with footage of both races, is enough to find Best in breach of the rules.
Best was banned for four years after the first hearing but the verdict’s validity was challenged within days, when Best himself discovered that the chairman of the original panel, the solicitor Matthew Lohn, had been working privately for the BHA for some years. An appeal panel subsequently quashed Lohn’s verdict on the grounds of an appearance of bias and also because the published reasons were found to be insufficient.
That began a difficult summer for the BHA’s integrity department, whose work has never previously attracted such scrutiny. Some of the heat went out of the subject when an independent review by the barrister Christopher Quinlan QC made 24 recommendations for change that were immediately adopted by the BHA, including a revised power structure intended to ensure the disciplinary panel system is truly independent of the regulator in future. The exit of Adam Brickell, the integrity director who quit in September, should also allow the BHA to move on from this year’s criticism, for all that his departure was said to be unrelated to same.
But the rehearing is accompanied by escalating tension at the BHA’s High Holborn office, where there is bitter resentment that the pursuit of what officials see as a legitimate case should have rebounded so badly on the ruling body.
The outcome matters enormously. If Best is found in breach, officials will feel able to claim that a satisfactory destination has been reached, even if there were bumps on the road. If, however, the case falls apart, there will be questions about the judgment of senior officials who insisted on pursuing it despite the variety of ways in which their handling of it has been attacked as deficient.
One likely flash point this week is an email sent in January from the BHA to John’s solicitor, in which the authority outlined what it would seek in the way of punishment for John if his evidence were as his lawyer had predicted. The BHA and John’s solicitor both deny that this amounts to evidence of a deal being struck in exchange for the jockey giving evidence.
However, Best’s representatives are unlikely to let the matter rest there and will point to the fact that the BHA initially resisted disclosing the email to them at the first hearing. Lohn did not refer to the email in his judgment, an omission which was described as “surprising” by the appeal chairman, Anthony Boswood QC, who said it was “clearly of potential relevance on the issue of Mr John’s credibility”.
