A different approach required

Race planning must be a thankless task at the best of times, but on occasions you have to wonder how much thought actually goes into it.

It seems like most of the races in the calendar simply rollover from year to year without anyone taking a proper look at whether or not they are either fit for purpose or give the best value to the industry.

Here is an example from last week: The Dundalk card on Friday included a seven furlongs race for 4-year-olds and older horses that attracted just three runners.

The same race attracted five runners in 2022 and only four runners in 2023. You would think by this stage it would have become clear that there is no demand for a race of this nature at Dundalk in the middle of January.

With the new Media Rights deal that the racecourses have signed up to now linking their revenue to betting turnover, a race of this nature at Dundalk, with an unbackable 1/20 shot hacking up in a three runner affair, won’t do their bottom line any favours.

Coincidently, that 1/20 favourite has run in this seven furlong race in each of the last three years picking up a total of €12,325 in prize money in the process.

The Future Stars Grade Two bumper at the upcoming Dublin Racing Festival is another race that the planners might consider taking a look at.

As the race title suggests this contest is supposed to provide an opportunity for the ‘future stars’ of the sport to showcase their talent enroute to bigger and better things.

This race has provided a springboard for horses such as Envoi Allen, Kilcruit, Appreciate It, Facile Vega and most recently A Dream To Share to go on to achieve Grade One success.

The race was never designed for Champion Bumper horses from the previous season to come back and exploit its conditions, but that is what seems likely to happen next week when A Dream To Share is set to reappear.

The race conditions of the Future Stars bumper do not include any penalties for previous Grade One winners which means that a Champion horse such as A Dream To Share can race off level weights against this season’s emerging talent.

As the conditions stand a horse could, in theory, win the Future Stars Bumper four years in a row - at four, five, six and seven years of age.

Another anomaly regarding Pattern Bumpers in Ireland is that should a colt ever win the Grade Two Future Stars race, which is open to both Colts and Geldings, it would not be eligible to run in the Grade One Champion Bumper at the Punchestown Festival at the end of the season as that race is confined to mares and geldings.

Moving on to more serious matters, I was very disappointed to read about the case of trainer Thomond O’Mara detailed in the report of a Referral Hearing published last week.

The gist of the story is that O’Mara blamed Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board (IHRB) Clerk of the Course Paul Moloney for an incident at Limerick on 27th July last year when a horse he trained, which was ridden by his son, slipped up after passing the winning line.

Thomond O’Mara was of the opinion that the horse stepped in a hole or a false patch of ground and that his son was fortunate to escape serious injury.

O’Mara was so upset by the incident that he repeatedly made phone calls to Moloney, including late at night. Moloney eventually had to block the trainer’s number on his phone, but that didn’t put an end to it. O’Mara contacted a senior stipendiary steward about the matter on several occasions before events took a turn for the worse at Cork racecourse on 26th November when O’Mara confronted Clerk of the Course Moloney. The trainer started shouting accusations at Moloney before grabbing him by his shirt and tie.

The Referral Committee found the trainer guilty of breaching three different Rules including that he “abused, intimidated and physically assaulted an IHRB Official.”

These are obviously very serious charges and not surprisingly the Referral Committee imposed a €10,000 fine and suspended Thomond O’Mara’s licence to train horses for three years.

There was no mention in the report issued after the Referral Hearing as to whether O’Mara had apologised to Paul Moloney, or if he had shown remorse for letting the situation get out of hand in the first place. There was also no mention of any plea made on his behalf that withdrawing his licence for three years would impact on his ability to earn a livelihood.

Despite the absence of any apparent mitigating factors the Referral Committee decided to waive the entire three years suspension on the condition that O’Mara doesn’t reoffend in a similar manner over the next three years.

Not a day, not an hour, not a single minute will Thomond O’Mara have his licence withdrawn for assaulting an IHRB Official.

This is the second time in a row that a trainer has been found guilty of a major breach of the rules and has had his licence taken away, only for the entire sentence to be suspended.

You don’t see this happening with jockeys. Imagine the uproar there would be if a jockey was banned for 21 days for excessive use of the whip, but if he didn’t reoffend for the another 21 days, he wouldn’t serve any suspension.

Perhaps the IHRB’s Referral Committees should consider a different approach in these cases. If they are struggling, for whatever reasons, to pull the trigger and impose an active suspension of a trainer’s licence, why not simply bar them from attending race meetings for the duration of the period? Let them continue to train their horses unless they reoffend, but prohibit them from going racing.

This would allow the trainer’s staff and owners to be unaffected by the sanctions and permit the trainer to continue to earn a livelihood, which seems to be at the core of these Referral Committee decisions. But at least there would be some level of ongoing discomfort for the offending trainer.

I’d imagine Paul Moloney would also be a lot happier doing his day job if he knew he wasn’t going to bump into Thomond O’Mara at the races on a regular basis for the next three years.