Google sets the agenda

Google contacted this website last week to inform us that “due to a request under the data protection law in Europe, Google can no longer show” in their search results a news article we published in 2013. The article will no longer be included in Google search results for queries relating to an individual or individuals named within the article.

This news article was about a number of individuals, ten in all, who were banned from racing for varying lengths of time due to their involvement in a betting scandal.

This is the first time that Google has contacted us about taking such an action but they do stress that this article hasn’t been blocked entirely from their search results. “it’s only been blocked on certain searches for names on versions of Google’s search results for countries applying European data protection law. This page will continue to appear for other searches.”

So what we have here is one or more people that were banned from racing almost a decade ago wanting all mentions of their case to be deleted from Google search results when you type in their name(s).

It’s not that hard to see why they would want this. They did something wrong ten years ago but the internet never lets them forget or move on from it. Every time they meet someone new in their business or personal lives this stain from their past reappears.

Several years ago I received a personal plea from the relative of a young Irish jockey to remove a news article from irishracing.com for a similar reason. The young apprentice had been banned by the IHRB for testing positive for cocaine. After serving his ban and turning his life around he was trying to make a fresh start in the UK but was finding it difficult to get going. Both himself and his relative believed that our news article may have been contributing to his struggles as every time a UK trainer typed his name into Google, up popped the article about him being banned for taking drugs.

Rob James’s success last Saturday in the Scottish Grand National is another case in point where a past indiscretion somewhat sullied his big day. It was understandable that James’s IHRB ban would have resurfaced last weekend as this was his first notable success on the track since serving the ban but the question has to be - how long should one error of judgement or a bad decision continue to haunt an individual?

Poor old Roger Loughran has never been allowed to forget his one faux pas by Google. Some 17 years after his brain freeze at Leopardstown it is still the number one news item that appears when you type his name into their search engine. There must be thousands of other news articles across the internet about winners he rode but Google chooses to highlight the one day he made a mistake.

In almost all of these cases within horse racing the individuals have no criminal records and were only sanctioned by the sport’s governing body, but the power of the internet means their past misdemeanors and offences are never more than a click away from the surface.

The Robbie Dunne case is similar in some ways in the sense that many feel his ban for bullying Bryony Frost was too lenient, particularly as his suspension was reduced last week on Appeal from 18 months to 10 months. People equate his suspension to similar cases within other businesses where an individual would be dismissed from their job for this type of offence, but I’d argue that in a normal walk of life those individuals can simply walk into a new job the following day. Dunne’s suspension prohibits him from earning a living in his chosen profession for a far longer period and the publicity that has surrounded this case means he will never be able to put this behind him.

The most worrying aspect to the Dunne/Frost case is that the innocent party in all of this appears to have come off just as badly if not worse. Bryony Frost’s mounts have dried up since the case became public and if it wasn’t for the continued support of Paul Nicholls and Lucy Wadham she’d barely appear on a race card at all these days. As an industry, horse racing has failed Frost and it doesn’t bode well for any future cases of bullying within the sport. All the huff and puff from the authorities and jockeys’ associations about reforms to the culture within the jockeys’ room have done nothing to save the career of Frost.

Finally, it was nice to see Michael Hourigan back in the limelight at Fairyhouse on Sunday when Doran’s Weir won the Listed Mares’ Bumper. The 74-year-old has been around the game all his life and I remember him telling me that he was training for over six years before he eventually trained his first winner. He enjoyed some great times from the mid-1990s through to the mid-2000s highlighted by the big race successes of the same owners’ Doran’s Pride and of course Beef Or Salmon. At the height of his powers Hourigan was training upwards of 150 horses from his Limerick base. Those numbers have dwindled over time and he only trains a dozen or so now, but like many others across the industry, send them a decent horse and they are more than capable of getting the results.