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Right, since the forum has hit a flat spot let’s give it a few reminders and keep it up to its work.
Cav pointed out this
Handicapper dropping Little Rory Mac by 2lbs despite jockey getting banned for 10 daysPay attention, handicapper! I was going to suggest an automatic 2 or 3lb rise as punishment but that would distort the handicap I suppose. And if you played your cards right you could have a blatant gentle schooling pipe opener and simultaneously bump your horse up just enough to be reasonably sure of a place in the big oversubscribed handicaps. So a punishment rise is a nonstarter but they should not be dropped.
McCormack, who runs six horses under the name of his Bury-based packaging firm The Vacuum Pouch Company, briefly changed his Twitter profile picture to a photo of a handbrake “just for a laugh” and in response to those complaining about the performance of Little Rory Mac at Warwick.
Well there are clever handicap plots, and then there’s just being a prat and waving it in people’s faces. I hope his next handicap plot gets walloped by some diamond in the rough. The selfish prat.
It would be possible to make the punishment a 7lb penalty in your next race, whilst leaving the handicap mark unchanged. So the horse would still only qualify for the same races, but would carry a bigger weight in those races. And if it happened to win despite the extra 7lbs, then the handicapper would be entitled to raise it based on that performance, just as they do if you carry overweight, or run from out of the handicap.
The best thing would be to ban the horse from the betting until it a realistic handicap mark is achieved.
The horse can run whenever connections want it to run, but NO BETS shall be taken on such horse.I wonder how you could have a horse in a race but it not figure in the betting?
Possibly not workable as it would be influencing any race it was involved in.Stopping people from unfairly influencing racing by cheating in the first place would help but that sadly is the inherent and unavoidable nature of the sport ( it would seem)
Deterrents are not in place and clearly punishments not enforced.
Rider banned 10 days horse dropped 2llbs.make the punishment a 7lb penalty in your next race
Clever. Trying to think of drawbacks. Need a clause to stop punishment penalty boosting a very fast improving horse into making the cut for a big high value handicap.
On a tangent- do stewards get audited, does anyone know?
Eg does a central panel periodically review a sample of race videos and stewards’ enquiry notes- or lack of enquiry where the race video suggests there should have been one – from each course and put courses in “special measures” if their stewards are making consistently too lenient/harsh/inconsistent decisions?“Heard was suspended for 10 days for failing to ride his mount in such a way that he could be seen to ask for real or substantial effort to obtain the best possible placing.”
Absolutely inexplicable then, that the horse can have its mark lowered on the back of that run.
I would LOVE to know the process/logic at the BHA that allowed this to happen. I did email Dominic Gardiner Hill about it, but never received a reply.
Nonsense like this just gives racing a bad name, and the BHA really should be doing a lot better.
“A cheats charter”, Sir Henry once called the handicap system. In cases such as this, you wouldn’t disagree with him.
Greenasgrass,
Courses don’t have stewards any more, in the sense of each track having a panel unique to that course. Apart from an unpaid chairman, all stewards are now fully paid employees of the BHA.
For example, here are the details for Ascot today:
Assistant Steward: Josie Brown.
Raceday Assistant: Guy Upton.
Steward: Chris Rutter, Richard Westropp.
Stewards’ Panel Chair: John William Marshall (William) Barlow.Of those, only Mr Barlow is not on the BHA staff. The other four people work at whatever course they are assigned, and you’ll see them listed four or five days each week.
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