LAST Saturday, for what was a scarcely believable second time in a little over 10 weeks, a winner at Wexford was disqualified due to human error.

The first was Shield in a novice hurdle back in June when the weight cloth was accidentally left off the horse which resulted in the rider weighing in light. The second incident came on Saturday when Colin Keane failed to weigh in having ridden Unrequited to success in a handicap.

The first issue which needs to be discussed here is how this very serious matter was communicated to the public. Word started emerging from the weigh room within minutes following the race that there was an inquiry into the weighing-in procedure of the winner which immediately set off alarm bells on the racecourse, on social media and in betting shops all over Ireland and Britain.

Minutes later, it was announced that Unrequited was disqualified as his rider had failed to weigh in. No more detail was given either at the time or in the post-race reports from the Turf Club, leaving the paying public to speculate about what had happened. Indeed, it wasn’t until Ger Lyons told the story of what had transpired on his Facebook page the following day that the public were made aware of what had happened.

The Turf Club have made plenty of improvements in how they go about their business in the last year or so, but their communications with the racing public continue to be an issue and this was an avoidable failure in communication that left the racing world in the dark during what was a very serious incident.

Indeed, I feel that the seriousness of this incident has been somewhat underplayed. Regular readers of this column will know how highly I regard Colin Keane as a rider and of course I have sympathy for him on a personal level in this case, but that cannot cloud my feelings on the seriousness of the mistake he made and the punishment that was handed out.

The Irish tend to be a very forgiving breed and thus it wasn’t surprising to see and hear plenty of comment that considered the 10-day ban that Keane received as being harsh, particularly as it rules him out of Irish Champions Weekend. However, all personal sympathies aside, we shouldn’t lose sight of the impact that a mistake like this has.

Obviously the trainer, owner and jockey himself all suffer in financial and emotional terms, but the biggest losers in financial terms are the betting public who placed their faith in all concerned to abide by the rules and do their jobs to the expected standard.

On Betfair alone, the destination of hundreds of thousands of euro was impacted by the amended result, as those who backed Unrequited from before the off right down to the minimum price of 1/100 as the horse approached the line in-running lost their stakes and rightful winnings through no fault of their own. Spare a thought also for those who laid the runner-up at all rates up to 999/1 and had to pay out when the result was amended.

Bring the bookmakers into the equation and this is a human error that has resulted in seven-figure sums of money being removed from the pockets of racing fans across the industry who didn’t deserve it. Incidents such as this do not reflect well on the professionalism of Irish racing.

To give some worldwide context into how an offence such as this is viewed and punished, on social media there was widespread disbelief from racing fans in Hong Kong and Australia that an incident like this could be allowed to occur and to a man they couldn’t believe how lenient the punishment was. Indeed, in both those countries a racing official escorts the winning rider to the scale to make sure no one interferes with him/her and that they weigh in correctly. In the unlikely event that a rider didn’t weigh in after winning a race and was disqualified in those jurisdictions, a riding ban of at least three months and most likely much longer would be expected.

No doubt many will consider that length of a ban to be draconian, but the danger of the current Irish situation is that with such a comparatively lax attitude towards such a serious offence and lenient punishment that a breach of it attracts, the risk is run of someone making a not so innocent mistake by “forgetting” to weigh in. This would allow his/her colleagues to make substantial profits having laid the horse in question both pre-race and in-running with only a relatively minor 10-day ban to fear.

As was suggested in this space in the aftermath of the Shield incident, while the above scenario may seem a bit Dick Francis, the best way to prevent a loophole being exploited is to do one’s best to close it.

There are a couple of things that could be done here to make this situation less likely to occur in future. Punishments could be significantly increased to act as a deterrent and/or perhaps we could follow the Australian/Hong Kong example by allocating a Turf Club employee to escort each winning rider back to the weigh room.

However, a more positive change might be to weigh in the winning rider in the presentation area of the parade ring, which already occurs on some high-profile racedays. Doing so allows much less scope for a rider to become delayed prior to weighing in and also makes them more readily available to talk to their connections and to be interviewed by both the media and over the public address. Two birds with one stone?

THERE has been a huge amount of debate in Britain of late regarding all-weather racing, with Newcastle and Catterick both looking to add all-weather tracks to their racecourses. Whatever about the individual merits of those plans, what strikes me is the apparent lack of clamour for another all-weather track in Ireland.

Despite plenty of misgivings being expressed at the time and the fact that it opened not long before the world economy went into freefall, the all-weather track at Dundalk has been a major success since it opened in 2007. It consistently produces competitive racing and, with the vast majority of Ireland’s top trainers all supporting the track with talented horses, the record of horses that win maidens there going on to stakes-race success has been very impressive.

As Ireland’s economy recovers, the possibility of an all-weather track in the southern half of the country needs to be considered. Sure, some will say that one all-weather track is sufficient for our horse population and that our fixture list is a sufficient size as it is but I would argue an alternative.

I agree that our fixture list is the right size at the moment but that doesn’t mean that it can’t be refined. In Ireland, quite a bit of our low-level flat racing takes place on unorthodox tracks that some would argue aren’t suitable for flat racing at all. Whilst maintaining quality must always be a priority, low-level horses are an inevitability and they should be given fair opportunities to give their owners a return. Taking these races from those turf tracks and transferring them to an all-weather track would be a positive step.

Whisper it softly, but the economic tide seems to be turning in this country and it isn’t unreasonable to expect the number of horses in training to rise again in the coming years and the fixture list will need to respond if we are to avoid a return to the bad old days of toxic levels of balloting.

Proposed course

The proposed new all-weather racecourse at Two-Mile-Borris seems to be dead in the water so the HRI-owned Tipperary Racecourse appears to be the right candidate for the job.

This would allow Tipperary to race during the winter months which is currently not an option due to how heavy the turf gets there. Having an all-weather straight track would also be a significant positive that Dundalk does not have. As well as the substantial income that racing generates through media rights, one would imagine that such a track would be hugely in demand from southern-based trainers looking to give their horses a racecourse gallop on a safe surface, which would offer another lucrative year-round income stream.

It would be a big investment, but with huge numbers being bandied about in relation to the cost of the necessary task of bringing the Curragh up to modern standards, one suspects that Irish racing would get much better bang for their buck from an investment in a new all-weather track which would come at a fraction of the cost of the Curragh redevelopment.

It Can Be Done – The Second Edition

Frustrated by the stigma attached to betting in mainstream society, as well as the low regard that many hold Irish horse racing in as a betting medium, racing journalist Kevin Blake puts his neck on the line and sets out to knock these two proverbial birds with one literary stone in his book It Can Be Done.

Kevin’s unusual mix of professional experience as both a form analyst and assistant trainer has led to him having many thought-provoking theories on racing which he shares throughout the book. In particular, his controversial and informed views on the value of inside information, his rejection of each-way betting and forthright assessments of the psychological requirements to be a successful punter have provoked much debate and discussion.

All his theories and methodologies are then put to the test as Kevin describes in detail each and every bet (fully verified) he placed during the 2013 Irish flat season and the thinking behind them. Follow him on the high-stakes ups and downs as he goes through both the hottest and coldest runs of form of his betting life in a rollercoaster season that encapsulates the mental challenge that serious betting presents.

Now fully updated with 6,000 words of new content that addresses the most talked-about aspects of the first edition of the book, it can be ordered here:

Print: www.theirishfield.ie/store

ebook: www.amazon.co.uk/Can-Be-Done