The British Horseracing Authority’s handling of the controversial Jim Best case, the rehearing of which begins on Monday, comes under scrutiny in the respected Timeform’s latest Chasers & Hurdlers annual, out now, and racing’s governing body is found wanting.
One of the key criticisms from the racing press, that has on the whole steered clear of the thorny story, which concerns the running and riding of two Best-trained horses last December, has centred on the refusal of the BHA to comment after the independent appeal board ordered the rehearing.
Best was originally disqualified for four years after the BHA’s disciplinary panel found him guilty of ordering the jockey Paul John to lose on the stable’s runners, Echo Brava and Missile Man, but the verdict was quashed on appeal after it was discovered that the panel chairman, Matthew Lohn, had done legal work for the BHA worth more than £50,000.
Timeform, clearly not impressed by the affair, states: “In the modern-day moral climate of obfuscation and denial, in which under-pressure organisations tend to adopt a siege mentality and hide behind excuses and lawyers, it came as no great surprise – though it was most disappointing – that the BHA refused to comment, or answer questions, on the findings of the Appeal Board (using the justification that it would ‘potentially prejudice the re-hearing’).
“What was the exact nature of Matthew Lohn’s involvement with the BHA? Why were concerns about Lohn, raised at a routine meeting 12 months earlier by the Professional Jockeys’ Association, with the BHA’s director of raceday regulation Jamie Stier, brushed aside? What were the possible ramifications of the Appeal Board’s ruling?” are a few of the questions that need answering according to Timeform, who conclude: “ … the BHA’s policy of silence has so far conveyed a contemptuous attitude and brought only self-inflicted opprobrium on the sport”.
The BHA are also urged to up their game over non-triers in the long essay on Anibale Fly, a horse owned by JP McManus who was at the centre of two notable cases considered by the Irish authorities last season involving animals whose running and riding were questioned by local stewards. The owner successfully appealed in the instances examined but Timeform is adamant that too many non-triers are being missed by the authorities.
“There is no shortage of clear-cut-cases,” this book insists, “of jockeys in both Britain and Ireland who, on the face of it do not, in the wording of [racing’s rule book] ‘ride throughout the race in such a way that he can be seen to have made a genuine attempt to obtain from his horse timely, real and substantial efforts to achieve the best possible placing’.
“Timeform’s analysis of races, and of individual performances in them, is in the public domain very soon afterwards, but the English legal system is heavily weighted against the press and media, which limits publishers to what they can say. [Racing] has ultimately got to rely on the vigilance and expertise of local stewards and their stipendiaries, who all too often – especially in Britain – turn a blind eye, or actually seem blind, to non-triers”.
One of the most important roles the BHA has is to keep the public on side where the contentious issue of horse welfare is concerned, particularly in the emotive arena of fatalities. Timeform suggest that the BHA “is perhaps being economical with the truth by regularly quoting a 0.2% fatality rate for racing in Britain. In truth the rate is 0.1% on the Flat and 0.4% (four deaths per thousand runners) over jumps. The consequence of a 0.4% rate is that two fatalities every year can be expected on average at a Cheltenham Festival with 500 runners.”
Timeform remind readers in the essay on No More Heroes, who was killed in the RSA Chase this year, that there were seven deaths at the 2016 Festival and at the start of the season Cheltenham announced they had moved the siting of a fence at which there were six fallers last March.
One aspect of the Festival that didn’t impress Timeform was the fact that the Triumph Hurdle winner Ivanovich Gorbatov was trained by Joseph O’Brien and not (as officially listed) his father, Aidan. “In an age when great store is set on ensuring transparency for punters, with calls for official racecards to include details of wind operations on horses, and mares being in foal, for example, it is surely ill-advised to allow a situation in which information that appears in the public domain actually misled punters and racegoers.”
Five Festival races in the last two years have featured unsatisfactory starts following the amendments to the starting procedures over jumps introduced by the BHA in 2014. The requirement is that races which have failed to start satisfactorily at the first attempt should then be required to begin from a standing start, but the ruling has resulted in many horses being at a disadvantage after ragged starts in big-field race. The worst example was the Golden Miller Chase in March when the well-fancied Zabana, who was sideways on when the starter dropped his flag, unseated his rider after being bumped into by a rival.
“It was hard to fathom [the BHA conclusion that the start to the Golden Miller was satisfactory] given the sideways-facing position of Zabana and the fact that he was actually moving, and not still as required, at the standing start when the tapes were released,” states Timeform, adding: “Connections and backers of Zabana had every right to feel aggrieved. Taken overall, it might be worth considering allowing the starter two attempts, rather than one, to get races at big meetings off with a walk-in start before resorting to a standing one”.
One true great of recent times exited the sport last weekend when Nicky Henderson retired Sprinter Sacre, Timeform’s third-highest rated chaser of all-time on a figure of 192p, after a scan revealed an issue with his near fore. But Timeform believe the Willie Mullins-trained Douvan, the highest-rated novice chaser in the history of their Chasers & Hurdlers annuals, is poised to join what they describe as “the immortals”. Douvan is already rated 180 and, to put that into context, Sprinter Sacre achieved a rating of 175p at the equivalent stage of his career.
The essay on Douvan contains a detailed and thorough defence of Timeform’s figures for their highest-rated pair of all-time, Arkle (212) and Flyingbolt (210), pointing out that the BHA’s head of handicapping Phil Smith, who described Arkle’s rating as “nonsense” at the turn of the decade and stated he would come up with a “credible estimate” of the horse’s ability, has still not delivered on his promise.
Nevertheless there are a fair number of disbelievers who find it hard to imagine the horses who dominated the mid-60s jumping scene beating modern-day greats like Sprinter Sacre and Kauto Star by 18 lengths and more.
Timeform argued its case after Smith’s comments in 2010 in the essay on Kauto Star and again devotes four pages in the current Chasers & Hurdlers to the subject. In its conclusion, Timeform states: “As changes take place over time in such things as training methods, the way races are run and even changes in the kind of tests that horses face (including the increase in conditions races for the top horses, for example), the reliability of the conclusions that can be drawn from Timeform ratings are more open to challenge.
“What is not open to challenge, though, and was fully demonstrated in competition, is that Arkle and Flyingbolt were capable of conceding almost the full range of the handicap (35lb in most races of the time, 42lb in some) to horses of Gold Cup standard, horses good enough to win that race or finish close up.”
“The latest jumping season might not quite match 1965-66 [when Arkle and Flyingbolt were in their pomp] in all its aspects, but, in the last 40 years, 2015-16 shares with 2004-05 the distinction of featuring four horses rated above 180, something that has not happened in any other season in the Chasers & Hurdlers era.”
While the recent loss of Vautour in a freak accident reduces that number to to three, there is an awful lot to look forward to in the current campaign, as outlined in the 1,000-plus pages of Chasers & Hurdlers covering the A–Z of the 9,000 runners from 2015-16 that ran in Britain plus the cream of the Irish crop.
Chasers & Hurdlers 2015/16 costs £75 and can be ordered at timeform.com.
