Here is something that I note with more than passing interest:

Racing Post 26th April 2020.

Henrietta Knight: Questions and answers.

“If you could change one rule in racing what would it be?” David Gable asks.

Answer:

“Improve the starts. I hate standing starts, especially in the big races. You can’t have 25 super-fit horses all standing still in a line, revved up and ready to go. I thought the starts at Cheltenham this year were appalling [7 false starts in 3 days]. I know they say the jockeys are to blame because they get so revved up at Cheltenham, and in particular they say the Irish jockeys don’t listen, but I still think the system’s wrong and something has to be done. It makes a mockery of the races.”

Does this mean that the matter will be dealt with asap? No way. It just means that at last somebody with the best possible credentials has made the case for change in language which is clear beyond dispute.

So far, ten years of constructive complaint by lesser mortals has been ignored by the BHA, which has treated the matter with indifference and ignorance, apart from occasional statements rich in misinformation. Will it pay attention to what Miss Knight has said? I wouldn’t bet on it. The depths to which the present management has allowed its performance to sink is beyond belief.

I live in hope with fingers crossed. Racing is about to find itself a new CEO. Now is the time to be thinking of the basic qualifications that the new leader must have. I hope, for example, that the Nominations Committee will bring up the subject of big-field starting under National Hunt rules when it interviews the candidates. It could be the litmus test.

PS (3RD MAY ) Contenders for the top job would be asked how long it would take them to sort the problem out. One clue: SPORT 35. Those who require more than 24 hours  would not qualify for the short list.

THE FACTS OF LIFE

The other day Brian Brendan Wright was released from prison, having completed half of a thirty year sentence for drug dealing on a monumental scale. He is free, his past is behind him, it has been suggested that he is not short of a bob or two, and within certain limits the world is his oyster.

Not so lucky is ex-jockey Graham Bradley. He was a superb jump jockey, but kept getting into trouble with the racing authorities because (this is a guess) he thought he was above the rules and enjoyed taking liberties. The title of his autobiography was “Wayward Lad” (the name of the horse on which he won the Cheltenham Gold Cup), and I imagine he would be the first to admit that those two words summed up his attitude to life in general during his riding career.

On 13 November 1999 he won a race at Haydock Park on a horse called “Ontheboil” and called time on his riding career. He then proceeded to create the basis for a very successful business as a bloodstock agent (buying and selling racehorses).

His biography appeared in 2000 and proved to be at least in part a description of his determined attempt to defeat the racing authorities’ endeavours to keep him on the straight and narrow. Not very clever, if the author was attempting to make a living out of the bloodstock market, which is very much a part of the racing industry.

The next development is describable, but inexplicable, as far as I am concerned. On 28^th September 2001 he appeared in a Southampton courtroom as a witness in a case concerning drugs and featuring Brian Brendan Wright, whom we met in paragraph 1 above. Part of Bradley’s evidence was a frank admission that during his riding career he had supplied Mr Brian Brendan Wright with “privileged information” about racehorses, in return for money.

This was in contravention of the rules of racing. So it should have come as no surprise to Bradley when the racing authorities hauled him up in front of a disciplinary panel and “warned him off” for eight years. However, even at this stage there was evidence that he was not a bad person. Sir Antony McCoy, Mr Peter Scudamore and Mr Richard Dunwoody gave evidence on his behalf.  If he had been a bad person, they would not have raised a finger to help him.

However, the rules were the rules and his career as a bloodstock agent ground to a halt in a matter of seconds. He wasn’t entitled to set foot on racecourses or visit racing stables, nor was he entitled to frequent bloodstock sales. Just like that.

There followed an expensive two years for Bradley: an appeal, a lawsuit, and a visit to the High Court. He was rebuffed at every stage. I have a feeling that he thought his reminiscences in a court room about youthful indiscretions was just another adventure from which the hero was entitled to escape unpunished. He was wrong.

By sheer stupidity Bradley had brought about his own destruction. Perhaps the Jockey Club recognised that fact. In April 2003, after further action in the courts, it reduced his sentence from eight years to five years. I find it reasonable to suggest that it was a reaching-out of a friendly hand to an overgrown schoolboy who was finding maturity difficult to cope with.

Graham Bradley served his ban uncomplaining. When it ended in 2009 he made it clear that he wished to become a trainer. However it would appear that racing’s disciplinary brigade was unimpressed.

Looking back on that period, Richard Forristal in The Guardian referred to Bradley successfully completing one of the courses which would-be-trainers must pass in order to be eligible for a trainer’s licence. I quote: “The regulator is clearly reluctant to licence him, given that he applied in May 2013, and all those who did the course with him are now training.”

The fee for those wishing to take these courses is £2,000. The BHA (British Horseracing Authority, the new body in charge of Racing) took Bradley’s money. But its subsequent attitude was noticeably lethargic.

It is not surprising. At that time an Australian called Jamie Stier had become Head of almost everything to do with morality on the British turf. A very savage man he turned out to be, and the unfortunate Bradley seemed to become a particular target for his zero-tolerant approach. This was sad, because Bradley had not put a foot wrong during the period of his warning off.

In 2014, while still waiting for a decision about his application for a trainer’s licence, Bradley was associated with Brendan Powell, a trainer who had always been held in high esteem by the racing world, first as a jockey and in recent years as a trainer. In his yard, among other horses, Powell trained a number of horses which were designed to be part of Bradley’s string, if and when he got a training licence. All above board, and with no attempt at subterfuge or concealment. The BHA was kept informed of everything he was doing.

On July 3^rd 2014, the BHA informed Bradley and Powell of the possibility that they might be in breach of the rules of racing.  The suggestion was that Bradley (unlicensed) was in fact training horses which were supposed to be under the sole control of Powell.

In due course a three-man disciplinary panel looked into the matter and on November 6^th 2014 the BHA announced that the panel had cleared Bradley and Powell of all charges.

It had taken rather a long time, perhaps because there was a problem. If Bradley was in fact training the Bradley group of horses, he must be so doing with the consent of Powell.  So a guilty verdict would have to apply to both the accused.  But Powell had an exemplary record and had stated categorically that he was the only trainer of all the horses in his yard.

So the panel had a good look at the evidence, and no doubt Mr Stier did the same, and then the panel cleared both the accused – and quite right too. I have no doubt that the suggestion of a conspiracy at the Powell yard was a complete fabrication, and it got the treatment it deserved.

The BHA announcement went on to say that the BHA was dissatisfied with the verdicts. One is entitled to deduce that this was the reaction of Mr Stier. Who else was there? Clearly his determination to keep the pressure on Bradley allowed him to look with complete indifference upon any collateral damage that might affect Powell. Not a very nice man, this Stier.

Jamie Stier returned to Australia in the spring of 2018.

Brendan Powell gave up training in 2019. Was his decision a reaction to his experience during the two years during which he offered Bradley a helping hand? Probably.

What of Graham Bradley?  At the very least the BHA owes him whatever money he paid in order to take the would-be-trainers exams. What I would really like to see, however, is the BHA’s new Independent Judiciary revisiting the Bradley case. I suspect that when his warning-off was reduced to five years the Jockey Club would have been thinking that “if he behaves himself” he could be an asset to the sport – and he did behave himself. I suspect that McCoy, Dunwoody and Scudamore felt the same way about the situation.

CORONA

In time past, when a lot of people were sitting around twiddling their thumbs and feeling hungry, the government looked at its “ToDo” list (public works that kept on being postponed). “A swamp to drain or a road to make”, as Kipling once described  these opportunities.  Whereupon one of each was selected, and a spike in the deaths by starvation was flattened.

I thought of this a few weeks ago when I read that gangmasters were flying in 160 Middle Europeans to harvest lettuces…. because the British never never never shall be slaves, and a surfeit of greenery was going to waste.

An hour ago I was watching the news on the box and there were several acres of Asparagus being saved for posterity by hundreds of healthy young boys and girls who turned out to be British, according to the voice-over. Yes, I admit that asparagus would satisfy the British class system up to a point but the fact is that when times are hard the locals are just as resourceful as any Continentals.

I imagine the gangmasters must have been what they call Fake News.  One has to be so careful.

Best wishes.

DONEC