- This topic has 196 replies, 52 voices, and was last updated 15 years, 10 months ago by
.
- Posts
SCHEDULES
Schedule 3 – Integrity codes of conduct: owners
1. This integrity code of conduct applies to any Person whose name is registered in the register of owners under Part 3.
2. Refrain from laying any horse in your ownership to lose a race.
3. Avoid imparting any information to anyone about your horse’s non-participation in a race with a view to the horse being layed until such time as the non-participation has been distributed by The Racing Calendar Office.
4. Refrain from laying any horse from a yard where you have a horse in training.
5. Refrain from causing any Person who holds a licence or permit granted by the Authority and with whom you have dealings to contravene any requirement imposed on that Person by or under these Rules.As pointed out on another forum, on which Rory also made many useful contributions, this schedule and its all-important point 4 is – astonishingly – entirely separate from the main rulings on owners laying horses. You have to get lucky or do some digging to find it.
Heaven only knows what other nasty surprises are tucked away elsewhere in the hundreds of pages of the BHA’s Rule Book.
The BHA managing to entertain us all as usual.
If Mr Findlay was allowed to effectively break one of the BHA’s many pointless rules with their say so, then they really should be stopped from running the sport in Britain. That is corruption, however you view the rule/s.
As per usual the BHA come out of this with zero credit.
sounds like there were two unfortunate events at the hearing:
"3. Mr Findlay, who represented himself at the hearing, admitted the breaches of the Rules alleged."
http://www.britishhorseracing.com/resou … tem=091755
plus a third, real biggie, of not having an m.o. worked out around them from day 1.
even a superficial skim of the rules highlights legal phrases in them that scream out how matters could have been arranged to avoid the "technicalities" now rued – the rules seem pretty blatantly to "show the way home".
really, could have saved a lot of grief.
If we are to continue with exchange betting we need to iron out a few issues. In particular the area of concern is the difference between outright laying and trading for a nett loss or profit from laying/backing. It would also help if officials and commentators were more conversant and accurate when it comes to their knowledge of the vagaries of exchange betting.
Frankly Chiswickian, far greater issues have to come to light than net loss/profit for individual owners but to cover that, only a blanket ban would work. It would be impossible to police or monitor if you only have a partial one.
For instance if net loss/profit covers betting, I see no reason why prize money or in the event of a big race future stud fees should not be covered. ie If an owner has the fav for The Derby they would be entitled to lay it for a few million on the basis it would be worth 25 million plus if it wins.
On a smaller scale what if an owner goes into his local betting shop in the morning has 60 quid on his horse then lays it back in the afternoon on Betfair, it is impossible to police and please don’t say all bets have to take place on Betfair, that would be legally unenforceable.Too many grey areas I’m afraid if you don’t have a blanket ban and after all there’s not that many owners jumping up and down wanting to lay their horses is there?
Anyone else find it interesting that Harry was ‘too busy’ to read all of the rules around laying his own horses but apparently not too busy to do a deal with Betfair and the BHA to allow him immunity from another rule about laying other horses from the same yards?
As Wit points out, a big part of the problem is the rule itself. It’s like having a single offence that covers everything from common assault to murder. There’s no distinction made between the type of non profit lay made by Findlay and the Sabre Light case, in which, allegedly, the layers knew that the horse would be prevented from winning.
Whereas the latter is plainly corrupt and should command a life sentence, Findlay could have been dealt with by a caution or a suspended sentence (what’s the racing equivalent of community service?), with a clear warning as to the serious consequences of a subsequent breach.
Btw, as established in a thread at the time of Cheltenham Festival 2009, the laying of other horses in the same stable is not against the rules of racing, it’s part of a code of conduct, and not backed up by any punishment.
What annoys me most about this whole business is that we are paying for the integity services through the Levy, and it absorbs vast amounts of money. Prize money will be cut again later this year, but will the budget of the investigators face a similar reduction?
And if the whole point of the integrity crusade was to persuade punters that racing was clean and safe to bet on, hasn’t it failed in it’s prime objective?
AP
Anyone else find it interesting that Harry was ‘too busy’ to read all of the rules around laying his own horses but apparently not too busy to do a deal with Betfair and the BHA to allow him immunity from another rule about laying other horses from the same yards?
Yes I do find this interesting. It’s also of interest to me why HF would want immunity from another rule about laying other horses from the same yards. Have any of HF’s trainers come out and said anything on this subject yet?
It would be very interesting to see how much HF has won (or lost perhaps) by laying horses in the same yards that he has horses.
A lot of PN’s horses go off at very short odds, and not all of them win. It strikes me as incredible that HF, because of his immunity from a certain rule/CoC, is allowed to profit from laying such horses. Whether he did or not is another matter, but the fact that he is allowed to is alarming (regardless of whether it’s a rule or just a ‘Code of Conduct’)
What annoys me most about this whole business is that we are paying for the integity services through the Levy, and it absorbs vast amounts of money. Prize money will be cut again later this year, but will the budget of the investigators face a similar reduction?
And if the whole point of the integrity crusade was to persuade punters that racing was clean and safe to bet on, hasn’t it failed in it’s prime objective?
Surely that’s a question honest trainers, owners and jockeys should be asking dishonest owners, trainers and jockeys directly. They are after all the reason why the BHA deems it necessary to spend 25 million a year policing them. But that doesn’t happen. How many racing insiders have expressed disgust and contempt for the actions of Blockley, Burke, McKeown, Lynch etc…Cant think of a single one.
If racing insiders took it upon themselves to be more proactive on integrity and more outspoken on wrong ‘uns within the sport the policing budget could probably be substantially reduced and diverted back into prizemoney.
The BHA managing to entertain us all as usual.
If Mr Findlay was allowed to effectively break one of the BHA’s many pointless rules with their say so, then they really should be stopped from running the sport in Britain. That is corruption, however you view the rule/s.
As per usual the BHA come out of this with zero credit.
Unless I have missed something we only have Findlay’s word for this.
Unless Harry Findlay hasn’t been laying Paul Nicholls et al’s runners, then the fact that he wasn’t censured for doing so in the enquiry speaks volumes, doesn’t it?
Seems clear from an article Findlay did for The Guardian on Gold Cup Day 2009 that he has indeed layed horses from the Nicholl’s stable.
"There were only a couple of horses that my racing mate Glen and I were keen to lay at the Festival and one of them was Chapoturgeon, who won the first yesterday, so any possible confidence that was left going into day three was quickly obliterated.
Just to rub it in, we made it a big place lay to boot and had a half-decent bet on Kia Kaha after remembering that AP [McCoy] thought he’d have beaten Herecomesthetruth when falling behind him at Taunton in December.
I’ve lost count of the number of times that I’ve sworn never to lay a Nicholls horse again (I’m just pleased there’s not a button that shows my profit and loss for doing it, because it would be truly embarrassing). This was not only a masterful training performance, but a good call to put him over the trip."
Statement from Paul Roy.
http://www.britishhorseracing.presscent … wsAreaId=2“The BHA never gave permission to Harry Findlay to lay horses in yards where he has horses in training. At a meeting on 24th November 2008, Mr Findlay was reminded that it was a breach of the Rules of Racing to place lay bets on horses owned by him, including those registered in the name of his mother. He was also reminded of the Code of Conduct for racehorse owners, which states that they should ‘Refrain from laying any horse from a yard where you have a horse in training’. Mr Findlay accepted the warning and gave assurances that he would neither lay his own horses nor those trained in the same yard.
Lol, these last two posts are fascinating.
Paul Roy’s statement says that at a meeting in
November 2008
Findlay was warned about laying horses from the same stable that he has horses, and gave his assurance that he wouldn’t do it again.
Yet according to the previous post by CR which has a story from the Guardian, Findlay layed a PN horse in
March 09
, just months after giving the BHA assurances that he wouldn’t lay horses from a stable that he has horses of his own.
I think Harry reported in his letter to the RP yesterday that he does lay horses from PN stable but that he is £700k
down
on those trades.
Once again, if Harry Findlay was writing in a newspaper column that he was laying Paul Nicholls horses, why did the BHA not censure him and/or issue a statement at the time. It doesn’t take much intelligence to collate the relevant information when it’s in the public domain, does it?
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.