Betting ban on trainers unlikely

The Jockey Club today stated a ban on trainers betting, as mooted by Sir Alan Budd's gambling review, would be "neither enforceable nor necessarily beneficial to racing".

Budd's review body unveiled its 256-page report - the fruits of a year-long investigation - for the modernisation of Britain's gambling laws. The aims were to simplify regulation, increase gambling choices for adults while more ably protecting the young and vulnerable and to provide more consistent and often tighter controls.

Among the 176 recommendations to Government are proposals that gambling debts be recoverable by law and that a single regulatory body, the Gambling Commission, be established with farreaching powers.

Much of the proposed regulation concerns casinos, but the report also likens close links between racehorse trainers and bookmakers, with concerns that trainers receive preferential prices in return for information, to insider trading in the City.

It advocates a close working relationship between the Gambling Commission and the Jockey Club "to ensure betting is conducted in a fair manner and that there is not unfair access to information". It goes on to suggest the two bodies "may wish jointly to consider whether the ban on betting should be extended to more people (for example, trainers)."

But the Jockey Club today quashed alarmist interpretations of the recommendations and stated it had no plans to extend the ban that has long prevented jockeys from betting to other members of the racing industry, including trainers.