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A pretty dull programme, little light was cast on anything.
Kenyon seemed to be saying on the one hand that laying horses to lose exposed the sport to corruption, and on the other that there was no suggestion that the jockeys had pulled their mounts.
And I repeat, you don’t even need to be a Betfair account holder to monitor the markets. If a punter fails to adequately do this before striking a bet, then he/she has only themself to blame.
However, plenty of people will sometimes put their bets on in a morning before heading off to do something else, and have no time to ‘monitor the market’!
As someone said earlier, how come the BBC can get hold of these tapes and enhance the sound, yet this wasn’t done for the trial itself?!
And I repeat, you don’t even need to be a Betfair account holder to monitor the markets. If a puter fails to adequately do this before striking a bet, then he/she has only themself to blame.
This is naive
The bulk of punters do not have the time to do so. Some have busy lives….
But if they think that their bet is only safe once theyve closely monitored betfair moves up to the off then they will go and punt on something a lot more transparent. As they seem to be doing anyway…
Racing will not survive purely on the betting turnover of those that spend as much time as us sad gits watching every move
Bottom line is our sport is run by chinless wonders and for people looking in they will label us all as mug punters
An Ok programme but nothing to get me worried about not betting.
Few things i noticed.
The races in question were almost all run of the mill low grade events which would have had low prize money and horses owned by small owners,syndicates and racing clubs etc
When the horses named that they were going to lose nothing about the draw,going,handicap mark,trainer form and jockey form
Some jockeys can be naive and a bit stupid but being at the lower end of the racing circuit maybe ways of making a few extra bob do spring to light.
Why did racecourses give permission for BBC to film knowing it was for a programme to show racing in a bad way.
The City of London police were hopeless and having an Austrailan Steward who knew nothing about UK Racing was plain daft, you might aswell get a steward from Silverstone.
If a favourite does not win a race then does this mean that every race has to questioned.
I was walking the course at Ascot before racing the year Russian Rhythm won the Princess Margaret. Fallon and Frannie Norton walked past me and I asked "is the filly expected Kieran?". He said "oh, yes" with a look that gave me every confidence she was a) special and b) going to win that day.
Does that make him bent? Does that make me bent?
No, but it makes you guilty of serious name-dropping.
Why did the HRA not have the same access to police evidence as the BBC?
I’m not exactly sure of the ins and outs but I believe access to trial evidence has something to do with the Freedom Of Information Act and the BBC, being a public body, can request and gain access to the evidence which the BHA can’t.
Is Firefox Baldrick in disguise?
His cunning plan for the man in the street to protect himself appears to be for said man to steer clear of anything that seems value.
Or maybe it is to only plough in after the price has shortened and it’s clear the horse is fancied.
Can anyone see any flaws in this strategy?
Why did the HRA not have the same access to police evidence as the BBC?
I’m not exactly sure of the ins and outs but I believe access to trial evidence has something to do with the Freedom Of Information Act and the BBC, being a public body, can request and gain access to the evidence which the BHA can’t.
Freedom of Information is information from public bodies and is open for anyone to request.
Much of police information is exempt from the FOI Act. eg
exempt information, which in the public interest, should not be published. Typically information may be withheld if its release would compromise the health and safety of staff, investigations & proceedings and law enforcement more generally.Once the police have decided to release the information anyone can request it. BHA seemed totally unaware that the police had released the information. Why did the police not analyse the recordings properly seems the more important question.
Is Firefox Baldrick in disguise?
His cunning plan for the man in the street to protect himself appears to be for said man to steer clear of anything that seems value.
Or maybe it is to only plough in after the price has shortened and it’s clear the horse is fancied.
Can anyone see any flaws in this strategy?
An increase in the price of turnips?
I think most of racings problems with corruption come down to the difference between opinion of racing folk and "proof".
I’ve never ridden a horse and unless they start to be bred with stabilisers and the ability to carry an unfit Gary Wiltshire impersonator then I never will.
How do you ‘prove’ a jockey hasn’t tried? It’s all arbitrary. We might ‘know’ (sorry for the apostrophes, but I have to show it is not known) when a horse is trying on the basis of where it runs, the price, the trainer, the jockey etc but it is not a legal burden of proof.
However, turning the argument around, I would be intruiged to hear a jockeys legal argument in proving a horse had run on its merits. I would imagine a similar inability to prove would be found.
A particular difficulty with such reviews is, of course, that the experts that are called upon are ex-jockeys.
A pretty dull programme, little light was cast on anything.
Kenyon seemed to be saying on the one hand that laying horses to lose exposed the sport to corruption, and on the other that there was no suggestion that the jockeys had pulled their mounts.
Mmm – are you sure he was saying that? Surely he provided taped evidence to suggest precisely the opposite? Of course he had to say "there is no evidence they didn’t ride to the best of their ability" etc – but that is almost like a legal disclaimer. A little reading between the lines perhaps?
A total waste of T.V. licence payers money that poorly re hashed some of the evidence given at an Old Bailey trial that cost taxpayers £10 million.
A trial that was never going to produce convictions and after the prosecution presented their evidence the High Court judge threw out.
The B.B.C. should have made a programme about how week the ‘expert’ evidence was. How poor some of the ‘undercover’ police work was and how good were the City Of London Police overall.
Not content to miss the chance they had to gain one successful prosecution they since have messed up on the ‘so called’ Football bungs by staging a ‘suprise’
dawn raid on Portsmouth manager Harry Findlay’s Dorset home filmed by The Sun Newspaper and B.B.C. South Today programme.They knew at the time that Harry was in a London Hotel that night and as a result of this as it turned out illegal raid Harry and his wife have already been awarded compensation by the City Of London Police.
The City Of London Police produced a report of the collapse of the Fallon and Rodgers trial.
It was named Operation Krypton and written by Commander Patrick Rice.
The document was never and never will be made public but Commander Rice admits in the Fallon and (others ) trial they conducted 500 interviews, they took 1,300 statements, they also had a staggering 17,000 exhibits and 40,000 pages of evidence.
So with all this ammount of evidence apparently gained why did the High Court judge find that the defence teams had no case to answer?
The Commander admitted overall Police failure and made 7 reccomendations for his force to focus on in the future.
Investigating the waste of public money and police failings would have been a programe worth watching.
In a way I agree with Seagull there that the biggest scandal of all was what a terribly executed prosecution it was.
I thought the programme itself was pretty fair and quite measured in it’s approach. Yes, there was the usual doorsteppping of people likely to punch kick or pick up and fling the reporter but there was also fair exposure for the views of the HRA, police and Betfair I thought.
Alderbrook is right that proving intent to stop a horse is nigh on impossible but TDK is spot on I think in saying that the references to the rides not being in question was a sensible legal disclaimer by the programme makers.
In a way that’s not the point though is it? If you’re a jockey with an ongoing relationship with a high staking layer and you go out to ride a horse that you have given as a lay advice it doesn’t matter to me whether you intend to stop the horse or not. The fact is that if you stand to profit from the horse not winning, either directly or because you know that the layer (your ‘punter’ to use the old fashioned parlance) stands to lose five or even six figure sums if you win and make substantial profits if you lose that’s going to affect how you ride. Put yourself in the riders boots. A narrow gap opens. Take it and you have a chance of winning knowing that a win will cost your punter six figures and that his ‘colourful’ associates in Spain are probably also layers of your mount. What do you do? Go for the gap or settle for a creditable third?
It’s worth remembering that when Culhane got his 1 year ban all that was used as justification was regular and frequent evidence of contact between him and those laying his mounts. It wasn’t deemed necessary to establish either that he had stopped the horses or even that he had received payment.
This is not as simple as black and white race fixing it’s about producing a culture that does not allow this kind of relationship to develop. On that topic by the way what’s good for the goose is good for the gander and evidence of inappropriate relationships between major bookmakers and licensed individuals should also be the subject of official scrutiny.
As for Glenn’s point about transparency. It is not the case Glenn that a horse being substantially laid must necessarily drift dramatically. If you are patient, disciplined and able to employ the right technology you should be able to make four and five figure profits laying horses at single figure prices without dramatically moving the market. None of the investigators referred to dramatic drifts as being key to their work. They were looking for patterns of laying of large amounts connected to certain accounts and certain riders by the look of things.
The usual,predictable trf reaction to this sort of show, imo. I suppose most of us just carry on with the same old mind-set and bias that we had before viewing.
My own prejudice is that I like Kieran fallon, and only joined this forum because I thought he was getting too much unfair flak.
I am also an opponent of the unlicensed layers on the Exchanges. Most definitely, these are at the root of the modern-day corruption in racing, imo.Yes, racing is about as straight as a corkscrew, and always was, but I’d say it is very unlikely that major layers operate without inside information of some kind.
Ironically, I thought the betfr spokesman was one guy who seems to know the score.
They know, imo.Hello,
It was apparent both Rodgers & Bennett knew who they could approach.
Whilst Fallon has serious character/personality flaws, i.e. plain daft, Williams, Lynch and Faulkner are comparatively young.
What is disturbing and upsets me is that Dean McKeown was among the targets and he has been riding for years.
I have, as I have with Culhane, queried some of mcKeown’s rides in the past and often thought the guy would never quite reach top class and have to accept his defiencies and his occasional bad day at the office.
McKeown’s appearance on last night’s show ws depressingBear in mind, if, and I emphasise, IF, Dean has been "stopping" horses’ over the years’, he has been doing it well before the advent of Betfair.
So the underlying premise of the whole programme that corruption has escalated dramatically due to the opportunity of "laying" via sites like Betfair may not b be the sole peg to hang our hat on.Unfortunately, corruption in racing has been with us for centuries, at what level ….Who knows??
But if McKeown is eventually brought to book and serious misbehaviour proven, it will be very upsetting to me as I must infer he has been at it for years and irrepairably damage my perception of racing over the last 20 years.
regards,
doyley
Just to remind everyone that the BBC was fined £400,000 yesterday for "editorial failures".(BTW, an interesting fine which, I believe, we, the licence-fee payers will have to pay, funny that innit?!?!)
Watching Kenyon I am always reminded of Damien of "Drop The Dead Donkey" fame!
Colin
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