On the first of next month, it will be a year since the controversial success of Am I Blue at Hereford, yet there is not so much as a hint from the British Horseracing Authority that its inquiry might bear any kind of fruit. All we are told is that investigations are "ongoing", but the trainer involved claims to have learned something different.
Delyth Thomas, based at Bridgend, has a low profile but became much better known when Am I Blue, previously hopeless, hacked up by 19 lengths that day, having been backed down to 5-1 from 25-1. "I [recently] spoke to one of the [BHA] men who interviewed me; he's lovely, and he said it's nearing the end of it," she said on Wednesday.
"I phoned him up and said, it's been hanging over me. Jockeys have been saying things, people have been asking me, do you need a wheelbarrow for all your cash?" Thomas refuses to say if the BHA have given any indication as to whether they will offer charges against her but insists she has done nothing wrong and has no idea why her horse, which she also owns, was so well supported at Hereford.
"I've never been a gambler. I might have £5 each-way sometimes but that's it. It's a mug's game. I'm just in it for the prize money." Thomas says she is "absolutely fuming" about suggestions that Tim Vaughan, the mare's previous trainer, was still in charge of her preparation up to the day of the win. "I had her for three or four months before she won. She was rated 100 when she was with Tim and couldn't win a race. Now, she's rated 113 with me."
The trainer has also been "thoroughly annoyed" by the general surprise that she could work such improvement from a horse, pointing out that she has long enjoyed success in Arab racing.
But there is more than Thomas's reputation at stake. Punter confidence in the sport is at risk when well-backed horses produce sudden improvement, and the benefit of any subsequent inquiry is rather lost if it drags on until the original event has been all but forgotten. No one questions the need for the BHA to make thorough investigations, but future cases will have to move faster than this one.
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