Eye of the beholder

On Thursday 21st July at Limerick the acting stewards weren’t happy with the performance of a horse named Ithaka which finished 6th in the opening Maiden Hurdle of the evening.

In fact, the stewards were so unhappy with the running and riding of the horse that they imposed a fine of €2,000 on trainer Ronan McNally, suspended rider Kevin Sexton for 10 race days and also suspended the horse from racing again for a period of 42 days.

McNally and Sexton weren’t happy either and appealed this decision to the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board on the grounds that the stewards at Limerick had made an error of judgement.

At the subsequent Appeal, which was heard last week, McNally described Sexton’s ride as a “masterclass” as “he put the horse into the race without him knowing he was in a race until the later stages and then he just had no more to give over the last two hurdles.”

Having reviewed the video of the race and heard about the back-story of the horse from McNally the Appeals Panel concurred with the trainer and quashed all the fines and bans that had been imposed by the Limerick stewards.

So in essence we end up with a situation where one set of racing people can watch a race and conclude that a horse was stopped, while another similar set of racing people can watch the same horse race and believe there was nothing untoward.

The Ithaka performance in the Limerick race was the classic ‘running and riding enquiry’ bait. The horse sat in last place, cruised into contention turning for home, but didn’t place under relatively tender handling in the closing stages. I can certainly see why the Limerick stewards would bring in the connections to detail the riding instructions (there were none in this case) and explain the performance. On the visual ‘running and riding’ alone this was a questionable performance.

At the Appeal Hearing McNally went into great detail about how Ithaka was “very nervous and a difficult horse to train” and when you watch the race back with this additional information it has the effect of painting a very different picture, one in which Sexton could indeed be lauded for his ride.

With the bans now lifted it shouldn’t be too long before we get to see Ithaka on a racecourse again. Next time he runs over hurdles he will be having his third qualifying run for a handicap mark. That should be a most interesting watch for all concerned.

One event that is becoming less interesting to watch is the Racing League. The organisers of the six-meeting series must be pulling their hair out. They have put together a series of 42 races with prize money in excess of £2 million up for grabs, yet they can’t even fill the races with the required quota of horses.

The opening fixture at Doncaster saw 12 runners less than intended while last week’s Lingfield meeting had 20 fewer horses turn up than the ideal of 14 runners per race.

From an Irish point of view you would have to wonder why 16 irish-based trainers would have signed up to take part if most of them had no intention of ever sending a runner over. So far Jessica Harrinton is the only irish-based member of team Ireland to have a runner, she had two horses compete on the opening day at Doncaster.

At Lingfield last Thursday no irish-trained horse ran. Instead the Ireland team has been propped up by 5 Irishmen training in the UK - Brian Meehan, Dave Loughnane, David O’Meara, Mark Loughnane and Richard Hughes.

One third of the way through the League team Ireland is bringing up the rear. If they were to turn it around and win this season’s Racing League it would probably cause more headaches for the organisers. The winning team of Trainers is set to share in a cash prize of £50,000. It would make a mockery of the event if all the Irish trainers that took no part got a share.

Lastly, Friday’s night’s betting coup at Tramore had a touch of the Barney Curley’s about it. Four horses from four different yards all combined in multiple bets. With two of the horses winning and all four placed the instigators got a handsome payday, but they were very close to pulling off a monumental touch with two of the horses only narrowly beaten.

What was interesting here is how none of the four horses even got a mention in the stewards’ reports issued from Tramore on Friday evening. The Tramore stewards had their hands tied to some degree when it came to investigating the coup. Two of the horses, So Scottish and Space Tourist, were entitled to run well on previous form so there was nothing to specifically investigate with regard to either of them. Molly Fantasy, which was backed from 20/1 to 9/4 before winning a Mares Maiden Hurdle, hadn’t run for over a year and this absence meant her trainer couldn’t be asked under the rules to explain her apparent improvement in form.

The fourth horse, Twoplustwo Equals, which was the real ace up the sleeve of those involved in the coup, only finished third so again the stewards didn’t bring her trainer in to explain her apparent improvement in form as they only do so when horses win unexpectedly.

Twoplustwo Equals, in the care of a trainer yet to taste success on the track, had finished well beaten on all three previous racecourse runs at odds of 200/1, 300/1 and 250/1 before being punted from 100/1 to 5/4 favourite for the Tramore race where she justified the support to run the best race of her career so far in finishing a close up third.