The British Horseracing Authority said on Tuesday that it would be “happy to help” any trainer with “concerns about information from their yard being used for betting purposes”, a few hours after Nicky Henderson’s outstanding chaser Altior was scratched from Saturday’s Silviniaco Conti Chase at Kempton Park following a drift in the ante-post betting from 1-4 to 5-2.
There was no market on Saturday’s race on the Betfair betting exchange, but Altior started to drift with the bookies on Tuesday morning in the face of strong support for his stable companion Top Notch, who won the race last season. By 11.43am, when Henderson confirmed on Twitter that Altior would not be running at Kempton, Top Notch had been cut to 5-4 favourite from around 5-1.
While emphasising that the Authority “does not comment on speculation around specific incidents”, a BHA statement on Tuesday evening said that “in general, however, we do have the ability to look into these matters if there is a concern around inside information being used to back or lay horses, if it is appropriate.” The statement added: “Should any trainer have concerns about information from their yard being used for betting purposes, then we would be happy to help them look into it.”
Altior is understood to have missed his usual spot in the first lot to exercise at Henderson’s stable on Tuesday morning and worked with a later lot instead, though no decision on whether or not he would run on Saturday had been taken at that stage.
Henderson later explained the reasons behind the decision to miss Kempton in a blog post on the website of bookmaker Unibet, which has a long-standing association with the trainer and sponsors his yard.
“We do not feel he looks his absolute best,” the trainer said, “and despite working well on Saturday he is still not 100% compared to previous years and he could still be feeling the side effects of the antibiotics he was given to treat the abscess on his wither.”
Altior will not run @kemptonparkrace on Saturday. Full details in my @UnibetRacing blog shortly.
— Nicky Henderson (@sevenbarrows) January 7, 2020
Altior will now be aimed at the Game Spirit Chase at Newbury on 8 February and will have a single entry at the Cheltenham Festival in the Queen Mother Champion Chase, which he has won for the last two seasons.
In terms of the amount of money involved, anyone who backed Top Notch for Saturday’s race on Tuesday morning armed with the knowledge – or very strong suspicion – that Altior would not be running is highly unlikely to be retiring on the proceeds, even if Top Notch obliges this weekend. Bookies are not stupid and their willingness to knock back any bet they don’t fancy is legendary, so the actual amount staked at Top Notch’s overnight price of 5-1 was surely derisory.
Since these were ‘positive’ bets for one of Altior’s rivals rather than wholesale laying of the favourite on Betfair, it is also more than likely that the rules on misuse of inside information were not breached.
If the betting public ever loses its faith in the overall integrity of the markets, however, racing is doomed – and there is nothing that knocks the punters’ confidence quite like the feeling that somebody else’s card has been marked. On that basis, the abrupt switcheroo between two horses from the same stable in the ante-post betting on Tuesday looked dreadful, and was attracting critical comment on social media for well over an hour before confirmation of Altior’s absence arrived.
In one sense, though, Tuesday’s events did provide some clarity for backers as Henderson also confirmed on his blog that any thoughts of running Altior over two miles and five furlongs in the Ryanair Chase in March are now over. Confusion over multiple targets at Cheltenham is one reason why ante-post betting on the Festival has lost some of its popularity in recent years, but punters now know that it is the Champion Chase or nothing for Altior and he is the narrow favourite at 100-30 to make it three wins in a row
Paul Nicholls said of Frodon, also due to line up on Saturday: “He’s in good shape and I’m looking forward to it. We didn’t ride him right at Haydock. We thought the grey horse [Bristol De Mai] was going to go a million miles an hour so we dropped him in and it didn’t work. But we actually found out that he had grade three [stomach] ulcers when he got back, so we’ve treated him for that and he’s in really good shape now, so we’re looking forward to a good spring with him.”
• This article was amended at 12.25pm on 7 January to reflect the fact that Altior is now a non-runner.
Ludlow 12.45 Mick Pastor 1.15 Rolling Dylan (nb) 1.45 Treasure Dillon 2.15 Private Malone 2.45 Major Dundee 3.15 Fontaine Collonges 3.45 Catch Me Not
Newcastle 1.00 Greengage 1.30 Little Jo 2.00 Heath Charnock 2.30 Good Effort 3.00 Another Touch 3.30 Union 4.00 Etikaal 4.30 Insurplus (nap)
Kempton 4.15 Drop Kick Murphi 4.45 Bezzas Lad 5.15 Holy Eleanor 5.45 Barking Mad 6.15 Raining Fire 6.45 Soldier’s Minute 7.15 Jamacho 7.45 Prince Of Rome
