Discussion on this morning's Luck On Sunday re the Charles Byrne issue, starts about seven minutes in
https://www.racingtv.com/videos/watch/ondemand/100617
"The owls are not what they seem"
Slim (24th January 2021)
David Walsh going for the big names here - dragging Ted Walsh, Aidan and Willie into things. Don't think its a bad thing myself.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/c...box=1611459720
On December 7, 2014, 13 horses went to the start of the Weatherbys Ireland GSB Chase at Punchestown. After the race, the stewards were not happy with the running of second favourite Foxrock, who came in third, believing the jockey Adrian Heskin had made insufficient effort.
They interviewed Heskin and Foxrock’s trainer Ted Walsh, and had the official veterinary officer, Terry Smith, examine the horse. Smith noticed Foxrock had lost his two front shoes and although he scribbled, “Unusual? not taken off!?” on a notepad, he presumed they had been lost during the race. Crucially, this supported Heskin’s view that something was not right with Foxrock and explained his tender handling of the gelding. Trainer and jockey were cleared of wrongdoing.
Ireland being Ireland, people talked. Rumours circulated and one of the stewards from that day at Punchestown subsequently rewatched a video of the race and footage of the horses in the winner’s enclosure afterwards. There was a shot of Foxrock in which his two front shoes were glinting in the winter sun, after he had run his race.
Unusual as it would have been for the horse to lose two shoes in the race, that had not happened. Those two shoes had gone missing at some point after he returned to the parade ring and before he was examined by Smith. The stewards estimated the total time at seven minutes.
The stewards reopened the case. They accused Ted Walsh of removing or securing the removal of the front shoes from Foxrock “once he was alerted to the stewards’ enquiry into the running and riding of the horse”, and of having “concealed from the Turf Club and misled [its] officers and stewards as to the true circumstances in which the shoes were removed”.
Walsh has long been a successful trainer and achieved his greatest success when Papillon, ridden by his son Ruby, won the 2000 Grand National. Through his TV work with RTE, he has long been Ireland’s most recognisable racing commentator.
On April 18, 2015, four months after the race, the case was reconsidered at the offices of the Turf Club at the Curragh in County Kildare. Nine hours were devoted to taking evidence. Expert witnesses on behalf of the Turf Club talked of the improbability of a horse losing two shoes in the minutes walking from the parade ring to the racecourse stables and then on to the veterinary yard.
Witnesses for the defence, including the highly respected trainers Aidan O’Brien and Willie Mullins, challenged that view. O’Brien said he’d seen horses lose two shoes in similar circumstances “umpteen times” while Mullins insisted a horse could lose two shoes post-race but that it may happen only “one in a hundred times”.
Though they had aggressively pursued this case against one of the biggest names in racing, the authorities still lost. Ted Walsh was cleared of any wrongdoing. It was a major defeat for the Turf Club. Like every other track in Ireland at that time, Punchestown did not have CCTV cameras at its stables, which would have assisted the parties in getting to the bottom of the matter as to how the horse had lost its shoes. One might have thought that the Turf Club would since have taken action to rectify this.
In 2018 the Irish Turf Club became the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board (IHRB). That was the year trainer Charles Byrnes and his son Cathal took Viking Hoard to Tramore races. That October day they drove from their County Limerick yard to the Waterford track. They got there in the early afternoon, lodged their horse at the course stables, went for a bite to eat and waited for the race.
Second favourite that morning, Viking Hoard drifted from 4-1 to double those odds. For a horse with decent form, he ran terribly. Five strides after the start, Kevin Brouder used his whip to bustle his horse into action. The jockey kept pushing but the horse could not get up to speed.
They lost touch before halfway and soon the jockey slowed the horse to a walk and took both of them out of their misery. It is customary in Ireland to drug-test the winner of every race but on this occasion, the authorities decided to test Viking Hoard. He tested positive for Acepromazine, a sedative commonly known as ACP, the sample containing one hundred times more than the permitted limit for the drug. The investigation would run for 14 months. The central questions were how the drug got into the horse’s system and who, if anyone, benefited from it not being able to perform.
Information from Betfair, the betting exchange, indicated that someone knew Viking Hoard would not win. One layer made €3,200 (about £2,850) by betting €34,889 that it would lose. Betting patterns for Viking Hoard’s two previous runs at Galway and Sedgefield revealed that the horse was backed to lose in both, €85,279 invested for a €24,000 profit. The IHRB’s chief veterinary officer, Lynn Hillyer, concluded that Viking Hoard had been “nobbled” at Tramore — drugged to lose.
In his evidence, the trainer Byrnes said he had no idea who had got at his horse. He admitted he and his son had left the horse unattended for 20 to 25 minutes in the two hours before the race at Tramore. Whoever had administered the sedative must have done so at this time.
Without CCTV cameras at the stables in Tramore there was no way of checking what third parties had entered Viking Hoard’s box that day. Four years after the lack of CCTV cameras had had an impact on the investigation into Foxrock’s two missing shoes, the same issue in this case would affect the investigation.
The top line on the IHRB website reads: “Protecting the Integrity of Irish Horseracing.” There are 26 racecourses in Ireland and seven years after the Foxrock case, the only track with CCTV cameras at its stables is Leopardstown. The redevelopment of the Curragh cost €81.2 million, €36 million of which came from the taxpayer, and still the €20,000 necessary to install CCTV at its stables was not spent. In the UK, every racecourse is obliged to have CCTV surveillance.
Not only was the IHRB unable to discover who doped Viking Hoard, it was not able to name the layer who gambled €34,889 on the horse losing. It is believed the bet was made in the name of a company in Curacao, a small Caribbean island. Betting investigators believe the individual behind the company has been previously involved in suspicious betting on cricket. There is, however, nothing that links this individual to the connections of Viking Hoard.
Byrnes was given a six-month suspension for leaving his horse unattended in the lead-up to the race. He admitted this while saying that it is not uncommon for horses to be left unattended at racecourse stables. He is appealing against his ban.
Soon, the IHRB’s Referrals Committee will deal with a case arising from the running of the Crowne Plaza Race And Stay Claiming Race at Dundalk last March. Two horses trained by Denis Hogan dominated the betting, Yuften and Tony The Gent. On their official ratings, Yuften was 17lb superior to his stablemate, but the money came before the race for Tony The Gent, who went off favourite.
The gamble succeeded as Tony The Gent beat Yuften. Concerned by Joe Doyle’s riding of Yuften, the Dundalk stewards interviewed both the jockey and trainer and passed the case to the Referrals Committee. A week or so before that Dundalk race the IHRB had done a deal with the British Horseracing Authority that allowed the Irish regulatory body to benefit from the BHA’s better access to betting patterns.
Soon, the IHRB will publish its findings in the Yuften/Tony The Gent case. While all this is going on, the IHRB has signed up to an agreement that gives stud farms a 24-hour advance warning of “unannounced” inspections and has yet to implement a series of new protocols agreed with the Department of Agriculture. In the past, the department was a key player in protecting welfare and integrity in horseracing.
Leading trainer Jim Bolger believes doping is a problem in Irish racing. Many agree with Bolger, though they are reluctant to say so publicly. There is also a belief in Irish racing, held by many in a position to know, that within the past five years a favourite for one of the handicaps at the Cheltenham Festival was stopped.
No sedative was necessary. Just a jockey doing as he was told.
Colin Phillips (25th January 2021), Desert Orchid (24th January 2021), Desperate Dan (24th January 2021), G-G (25th January 2021), Grey (24th January 2021), Outsider (25th January 2021)
All this does is betray Walsh's ignorance of his subject matter.
The cursory reference to a favourite getting stopped at Cheltenham following Bolger's doping allegations is a non-sequitur.
Furthermore, Bolger has a long-standing grievance with the Turf Club which he chooses to omit.
Both he and Kimmage have nothing, and nobody is going to break ranks even if there is anything there.
LUKE (24th January 2021)
Pretty sure Walsh or Kimmage wouldn't claim to be subject matter experts on horse racing.
Yes, and it certainly shows in Kimmage's piece today,
"..Do you find you can be critical of the HRI and others? Or do you have to suck it up?”
When you can't differentiate between HRI and the IHRB who is tasked with the integrity of the sport, which is what you're choosing to impugn Paul.
Jim Bolger shooting his mouth off is all they have, and like I said he always has been critical of them.
Walsh would.
Anyone got the Kimmage article?
Without seeing the replay, I'd have thought there would have been more obvious candidates than that but one of the owner's other horses was very unlucky in running late on. I couldn't say with any certainty that it should have won but it was unlucky in running.
Then again, RJ was riding it...
Illegitimi non carborundum
prince regent (26th January 2021)
I don't think you could watch the replay and conclude Barry Geraghty needed to do much to stop him. It is possible however that bet If In Doubt.
I have to say that a claim like that sounds like bollo* - its vague enough not to cast any aspertions thus no potential actions against the author, but still the insinuation can be enough - throw enough sh*t and some it will stick, if he had any proof whatsoever or if any proof existed why has there not been an investigation? It very much has a feel of pub talk that grew legs and ended up being repeated as fact, that or a complete figment of the authors imagination.
Did the BHA or whoever in the UK have access to betting patterns back then?