Racing's image hit again

14 April 2012

Dawn raids on sleepy villages and lurid headlines about race fixing and widespread corruption in the sport of kings. The image of racing has never been too far removed from the gutter over the last few years.

John McCririck is already banging a well-worn drum and asking, "How much more of this can racing's image take?"

The answer, of course, is impossible to quantify with any accuracy.

Panorama started the ball rolling in 2002 by alleging that racing was "institutionally corrupt" having been infiltrated at a high level by the fugitive London drugs baron Brian Wright during the 1980s and 1990s.

Kenyon Confronts kept it on the move by showing that several leading trainers were prepared to bend the rules in order to attract new owners, while the massive growth in betting exchanges such as Betfair have opened up an altogether new avenue for potential corruption in providing the opportunity for punters to back horses to lose as well as to win.

You can be sure that the exchanges figure at the heart of the investigation.

Former BHB chairman Peter Savill has described their existence as the greatest ever threat to racing's integrity.

There is no need to look too far for evidence.

Platinum Racing syndicate boss Miles Rodgers, recently handed a two-year ban by the Jockey Club, made a fortune laying his own horses to lose on Betfair.

Leading jumps owner Darren Mercer and London tailor Christopher Coleman have also been warned off over their activity on the exchanges, while the Jockey Club have a long list of cases awaiting trial. Next week, journeyman jump jockey Sean Fox finally faces an inquiry aimed at finding out whether he jumped off Ice Saint on purpose at Fontwell earlier this season.

Lancashire trainer Alan Berry and his betting blacksmith Steve O'Sullivan will be on the mat soon after being charged with deliberately running a lame horse in order to make money on the exchanges last summer, while leading Flat rider Gary Carter is due to face charges that he deliberately "stopped" eight horses from winning for financial gain last year.

Mud sticks, and McCririck is in no doubt that punter confidence is inevitably eroded by such a welter of damaging allegations.

"Instead of praising a great performance people end up being forced to ask whether what they have seen is straight or not," he said.

"The emergence of exchanges has helped make things a lot more transparent, which helps in tracking down wrongdoers, but you have to wonder whether racing can keep on taking these incessant blows without losing punter confidence."

The old argument that punters will desert racing if it is seen to be corrupt is undermined by the fact that bookmakers continue to report record turnover and that crowds at Britain's racecourses are on the up.

The question remains whether today's events only add fuel to the fire of those who argue that the racing pages may not be worth the paper they are written on.

Some will condemn the sport, but before jumping to conclusions it would be as well to remember what happened in the last major investigation-into alleged race fixing in 1998. On that occasion there was a similar sequence of dawn raids which left a clutch of top jockeys and a leading trainer languishing in police cells all over London amid talk of race fixing and massive corruption.

It took months to resolve the issue, but when the dust finally settled Graham Bradley, Jamie Osborne, Dean Gallagher and Charlie Brooks were free men with no charges to answer.

But what isn't in doubt today is that the next few months provide a make or break period for the good name of British racing.

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Racing's image hit again

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