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Felt very sorry for the conditionals in this race, first they get called back for a bucking bronco to be able to line leading to a tape break. Then dodgy half complete running rail leads them off course for about 100 yards no real advantage gained or lost but all got lengthy bans bar 4 of them.
Rules are rules though I suppose and there was a clear sign, surely conds walk the course??
Funny thing was seeing the eventual 3rd pull up go back the way he came and coast around on his own miles behind got to the last and was barely able to walk over the final flight that had been flattened with the jockey encouraging him for all he was worth..
Another farce for racing that could have easily been avoided by a few strategically placed traffic cones.
That rail has been part of Huntingdon for years. The jockeys should have checked the map and walked the course, its their responsibility, no sympathy from me I am afraid.
What Bob said, basically. It’s not as if this hadn’t happened before at Huntingdon, of course, as those who saw equally lengthy bans meted out to some similarly feckless riders back in March 2009 will remember.
Responsibility lies squarely and solely with the riders to familiarise themselves with the configuration of a course on any and every given raceday (especially, although that wasn’t an issue here, in the heights of winter when dollying or railing past patches of unraceable ground become more commonplace).
Christopher Ward did his prep-work and had that fastidiousness rewarded. Others didn’t, and they copped it. Really not a lot more to it than that, I’d suggest.
gc
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
It’s all very well just blaming the jockeys 100%, giving them a few days ban and moving on till the next time it happens, whether it be Huntingdon, Wetherby, Newcastle or wherever, that’s exactly what the BHA seem to think anyway.
But it’s not good enough, punters are losing out and it makes racing look very poor, racegoers, punters, commentators etc did not know what they were watching during that Huntingdon race, which horses were in and which out and I would have thought it was a negative for the track that it had happened before at Huntingdon only in 2009 rather than a positive.
As far as I know there’s no reason to believe jockeys are any more thick or lazy than other members of society.
The problem for jockeys especially if they’re inexperienced like Friday is if the ones in front go the wrong way they have to make a split second decision at racing pace.
As, some tracks already use, a few traffic cones would have left no doubt.But it wouldn’t be just a few cones, would it. There are nine fences and five hurdles per circuit at Huntingdon, and all of them involve gaps in the rail to allow for obstacles to be bypassed. So you’d need cones all the way round the track and more temporary staff to put them in place and move them if a fence or hurdle was bypassed.
It’s not as if Huntingdon is tricky – the hurdle track goes round the outside for the entire circuit. What those jockeys did was to set off from the 2m 4f hurdle start and head straight for the first fence. And it was the jockeys that produced the confusion by continuing after their initial error.
AP
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