Kenyon fails to land his knockout punch

Lydia Hislop13 April 2012

Racing is bent. If you didn't think that already, you surely do after watching Kenyon Confronts last night on BBC1.

It sought to expose cheating and race-fixing. Depending on how you define the first word, they found the former and called it the latter.

We should not throw up our hands that journalist Paul Kenyon had the temerity to investigate racing. Contrary to the arrogant closing of ranks by some within the sport - a reaction the Jockey Club has not entirely endorsed - we must acknowledge why racing was an easy target. And why some points hit home.

The programme was not completely successful. But it did allege trainer David Wintle consorts with perpetrators of theft and assault and pictures him flooring Kenyon like a schoolyard bully. It did show trainer Ferdy Murphy claiming to have made direct financial profit - albeit since disproved - from knowing one of his horses wasn't fit enough to win a race. It did depict jockey-turnedtrainer Jamie Osborne saying: "We'll cheat, we don't mind cheating." All three, to varying degrees, must now face the serious Jockey Club charge of bringing racing into disrepute. A hefty fine awaits. But they're unlikely to be banned because there is no evidence they breached the rules of racing.

Wintle needs some anger management and to reconsider the company he keeps. Trainers are allowed to bet, but Murphy's discredited claim smacks of insider dealing. Perhaps the time has come to grasp the nettle of banning trainers from betting - as jockeys already are - at least in races in which they have runners.

But the programme's main thrust is that race-fixing constitutes running a horse in unfavourable circumstances to reduce its handicap mark to a level from which it's more likely to win at a later date. In my view - granted, a liberal one - that's not even cheating.

In fact, Kenyon disproves his own theory when Seattle Alley, after two poor runs, fails to win the intended race. Until Monday afternoon when a strategic cut was made, the programme went on to allege Wintle privately instructed the jockey not to win that day and pocketed Kenyon's betting stake.

These were assumptions too far and - whatever "undercurrent" Kenyon claims to have detected in Wintle's behaviour - smacked of desperation when the initial premise failed.

Using anonymous confessors - a former jockey and bookie who admitted to 'fixing' races - also diminished the programme's impact, even for the uninitiated.

Kenyon partly plays his viewers' presumed ignorance to his own advantage - an accusation hotly denied by executive producer Paul Woolwich. Subtleties placed the audience on the wrong side of the 'them and us' divide. Whenever a Jockey Club rule was captioned, the voice-over switched to a plummy accent designed to convey the stereotype of racing's regulators sipping port while punters' money burns. When Kenyon spoke about racing figures, he used alienating language such as "the only way we can get close to these people" or "they always talk in code, these guys". It suggested racing's vocabulary evolved with sinister intent rather than by natural process found in all walks of life.

It would have been impossible for the programme to fully explain the complicated world of racing, so Kenyon necessarily had to pitch his report at the lowest common denominator. But for the sport, such simplification blurred the facts.

In Monday's press preview, Kenyon conceded: "The problem is the handicap system . . . puts people into the position of having to do this kind of thing." And there we have the nub of the problem. British racing is dominated by handicaps, the premise of which is to give all runners an equal chance.

When livelihoods are at stake, the incentive is there to ensure your horse is more equal than others. Methods to reduce a horse's rating - whether it be running over the wrong trip or ground, under-preparing them or riding them in a manner unsuited to that particular horse - are indeed common practice in racing. All of these are discernible to a punter prepared to do a little research.

I draw the line at doping or performance-enhancing drugs and if more than one jockey or trainer were to collude in deciding the outcome of a race or if they were to accept a bribe to affect the result, that is race-fixing.

This programme will not shock anyone remotely interested in racing or aware of the inherent perils of gambling. Is the public as naive as Kenyon assumes? Mind you, he's proved trainers evidently are - so eager were they to boast.

"What if my grandmother bets on a horse whose connections have no intention of winning?" wails Woolwich. Hard cheese. That's the price you pay for parting with money over something you know nothing about.

If she does the leg-work, she might even enjoy that feeling of knowing more than the next granny.

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