IT’S been an interesting week or so for racecourse officials in the UK, with a photo-finish result called incorrectly at Kempton, making it a staggering three times in this calendar year that this simple job has been fumbled, and we’ve also had a case of yet another non-trier punishment being reversed on appeal due to relevant evidence not being available on the day. I get an odd feeling that we’ve been here before....

It’s not a new phenomenon for the judge’s decision in a close finish at Kempton to be overturned, and there was controversy when Dave Smith called a dead-heat at the track in June 2013 which was immediately questioned by both pundits and punters.

In that case, it transpired that even-money favourite Extra Noble should have been given the verdict outright. The case was exacerbated by the fact that it took the experienced Smith just a matter of seconds to call a dead-heat, a decision which could be called hasty at best.

What wasn’t hasty was the length of time it took the BHA to correct the decision, with initial complaints dismissed by a spokesman as “conspiracy theories”, before bowing to pressure and asking Smith to reconsider his decision.

IDENTICAL SITUATIONS

If that sounds familiar, it’s not surprising, as an almost identical situation has just played out at the all-weather track, involving another winning favourite being accidentally demoted by an experienced judge, this time Felix Wheeler, well known to military-race enthusiasts as Major Felix Wheeler.

On Friday last, Wheeler gave the verdict in a tight finish to Bird For Life, when it was actually 10/11 favourite Oregon Gift who had broken the beam first.

If the sense of déjà vu isn’t already overpowering, then it’s capped nicely by the fact that the judge was again asked to re-examine the print before correcting the result after five days.

It also took five days for the BHA to correct the result of two races at Bangor in January, when an inexperienced judge called a pair of dead-heats (one for minor honours) because the photo-finish mirror was not operational. If that sounds like an odd coincidence, it’s not.

Under BHA rules, if there is a suspicion that an error has occurred, the judge has a maximum of five days to correct his decision, or face the greater embarrassment of having that decision formally amended by the authority.

OVERRULED

It’s perhaps curious that both these scenarios went to the wire, perhaps suggesting that neither Smith nor Wheeler was inclined to change their decision until it was made clear that they would be overruled.

I suspect the reason is more prosaic, in that people with deadlines tend to make decisions as late as possible.

What is clear is that those affected, particularly punters, of course, are not impressed that a clear mistake is corrected at the last opportunity, rather than the first.

It’s easy enough to forgive what happened at Bangor in isolation, but the latest Kempton incident was harder to excuse, given the judge had all the relevant information to call the correct result, but simply made a mess of it, and it’s not like the bold Major has no history.

In December 2015, he ascertained that The Blue Bomber had won an all-weather bumper from Quarenta before changing his decision, ahem, five days later having been asked to re-examine the print.

In a somewhat delicious irony, the horse who was denied the win initially is owned by Sir Martin Broughton, former chairman of the British Horseracing Board, forerunner to the current BHA.

The hapless Wheeler has also come under occasional due to a failure to provide official times, one of the judge’s other jobs on a raceday. He wouldn’t be the only official to have failed in this important duty, although the formal line for such incidents is “equipment failure”.

CENSURED

The case of Kerry Lee and Jamie Moore is of another ilk, with the pair censured over the running and riding of Kings Monarch at Chepstow earlier in the month, but exonerated on appeal, a result which echoes what happened with Graeme McPherson and Jodie Mogford at the same track six seasons ago.

In both cases, the appeals panel overturned the original finding by utilising footage not available to the stewards on the day, while pointing out that the original decision was entirely understandable.

I pointed out last year (after Nicola Currie had a 10-day ban overturned at Lingfield in identical circumstances) that the fact that stewards are working with incomplete information should preclude them from handing out punishment in such cases, and that if they feel there is a case to answer, they should refer the case so that all relevant evidence, including any mitigation for apparently tender rides, can be taken into account. This latest case merely underlines that argument again.