One dry day

Today has been rather pleasant, and not only for the fact that it didn't rain.  Well, that's not strictly true because, hard though it was to swallow on the one day of the month which was meant to be dry, we did have a few drops fall from the sky while I was feeding this evening.  Fortunately they were only a few, so basically we've had a dry day, which was a very rare pleasure.  It wasn't actually as nice, though, as this shot, taken as we followed David Simcock's string towards the Fordham Road at around 6.50 this morning, suggests, but overall we had some sunshine between the clouds, and it was both warm and (99.9% of the time) dry.  So that was grand.

We'd started with a lovely golden/red dawn, but as so often happens when it's lovely at the start of the day and lovely during first lot (as seen above), the day did largely cloud over subsequently.  But any warm, dry day is a bonus at the moment.  And a further bonus for the day was seeing Newmarket's celebrity Asian visitor, the recent Tokyo Yushun (ie Japanese Derby) winner Deep Brillante, who enjoyed a gentle gallop up the Al Bahathri in the company of the Clive Brittain-trained handicapper Mudhish at around 6.00 this morning.  Some of Clive's horses went up first, and I came away thinking that this should have happened tomorrow: the old back-the-first-trainer/jockey-you-see saw often holds water (as on Thursday last week when bumping into Giles Bravery in the gents at Epsom) and the first jockey I saw was Brett Doyle, seen here on the far side of the first pair of horses who came up the gallop.  Brett, whom I was delighted to watch riding the first winner at Newmarket on Saturday for John Ryan, rides Zarosa for us at Lingfield tomorrow, so let's hope that this maxim can hold good over a two-day period.

Anyway, I hadn't trooped out to stand in the rain-sodden grass of Lord Derby's field in my holed wellingtons to watch some of Clive Brittain's horses come up the gallop.  No, the reason for being there was to see Deep Brillante; and, while it wasn't a particularly informative exercise, I'm really glad that I saw him (pictured here, just holding the edge over Mudhish, who looks to be being ridden by Clive's very nice Japanese foreman Takashi).  As I'm a massive fan of Deep Brillante's sire Deep Impact, and an even more massive fan of Deep Impact's deceased sire Sunday Silence (to the extent of having sent Minnie's Mystery to Layman, to produce Roy Rocket who lives here, primarily because Layman is a son of Sunday Silence) I was delighted to see this horse, and I'd love to see him run really well on Saturday in the King George at Ascot.

But I'll have my loyalties more than divided on Saturday, as I'm a massive fan of Nathaniel.  And I'm a massive fan of Dunaden.  And I'm a massive fan of St Nicholas Abbey.  And the fact that all three are in my XII to Follow suggests that I'd probably like to see Deep Brillante finish fourth.  However it works out, though, the King George is shaping up as a terrific race, which is great as it is our greatest race (with the exception of the Derby, of course) and it's a race which always quickens my pulse.  And my pulse was further quickened an hour or so after having seen Deep Brillante by seeing the possible favourite for the race, Nathaniel, pictured her under William Buick wandering happily along behind Robert Havlin on one of his stablemates.  The build-up continues!

To change the subject completely, I'll reproduce a letter, written by me, which might or might not appear in the Racing Post shortly.  I don't really feel the need to provide an accompanying explanation because I think that the letter says it all.  Basically, I feel that poor Lee Newman, who made a very embarrassing mistake on Saturday, has been very harshly treated in that he has been given the same punishment for easing his mount prematurely for an unintentional and innocent reason (ie that he believed that the race was over - because Newbury's bizarre placement of a large half-furlong pole, which isn't something you'd normally ever see, led him to make this mistake for about a second) as one would receive for making the same mistake intentionally.  This struck me as being akin to getting the same punishment for manslaughter as one would receive for murder.  Anyway, I see that Lee is set to appeal the severity of the sentence, and I would have thought that he's long odds-on thus to get his sentence significantly reduced.  We'll have to wait and see, though; but in the interim, here are my musings:-

Racing’s history books are littered with miscarriages of justice, and not just in the distant past. However, we like to think that we’ve left such things behind now that we’re in the 21st century – which was why it was such a jolt to find that Lee Newman has received a punishment (a 28-day suspension) completely out of proportion to his ‘crime’.


For those who haven’t seen the race, Lee Newman did not commit the crime of deciding to ease his mount before the line, a misdemeanor for which a 28-day suspension can be seen as justified. Instead, he was momentarily wrong-footed by the fact that Newbury, for reasons unknown, has a half-furlong pole which looks more like a winning post than do many winning posts. (And if you dispute that assertion, have a look at York’s winning post last Saturday). Believing himself to have passed the post, Newman eased his mount for a second – and then, realizing his error, immediately set about trying to rectify it.

Sure, Lee Newman made a mistake which almost certainly cost his mount victory. That’s very sad, particularly for the horse’s connections, for whom I have every sympathy. There is a strong argument that he should be penalized – even though jockeys make mistakes and bad decisions in every race, many of which cost their mounts victory, and are very rarely penalized for it, other than by the natural consequences of employer dissatisfaction.

Every day, the results of races are affected by the decisions – some right and some wrong - which the jockeys make in them. We can all be wise after the event and point out the errors, but to expect these errors never to be made is as unrealistic as to expect no footballer ever to miss a penalty or an open goal, no golfer ever to miss a short putt, no batsman ever to leave a ball which hits the wicket or no fieldsman to drop an easy catch. In sport, these are split-second decisions in high-pressure situations; and some will inevitably be got wrong. But that’s life when sport is played by humans rather than robots.

Every day jockeys make mistakes, as do trainers, starters, commentators, pundits. Even the BHA managed to warn Kirsty Milczarek off for a crime which, it turned out, she hadn’t committed – so if basic errors can be made when the decisions are taken unhurriedly, how surprising is it that a jockey can make an innocent and understandable (if stupid) mistake when faced with a split-second decision at high speed?

Regarding the punishment, a 28-day suspension might sound no big deal – but it’s a savage penalty. Jockeys, particularly unfashionable ones, make hay during the four months of summer, May to August. To miss almost one of those four months means, at a conservative estimate, at least a 10% reduction in annual income. That is a massive penalty for a split-second mistake. It is unthinkable that a footballer would be fined 10% of his annual salary (not just of his match fee) for missing a penalty or a cricketer similarly penalized for dropping an easy catch; a starter to lose 10% of his salary for letting the field go while a horse was rearing, or any of us to face a similar loss of earnings for being confused for one second in a high-speed, high-pressure situation.

It is hard to understand why the penalty for Lee Newman’s mistake is the same as that given to a jockey who loses a race by deliberately easing his mount before the post. (Newman, of course, while deliberately easing his mount, did so in the belief that he was doing so after the line). In fact, it is hard to see why it should be as big as the 12-day suspension given to Mirco Demuro for riding at Wolverhampton last month as if the winning post came a circuit sooner than it did: Newman only misjudged the length of the race by 110 yards, while Demurot got it wrong by a mile, which was a less understandable (although equally innocent) mistake.

Unlike when a jockey deliberately eases his mount before the post, there is no point in using punishment as a deterrent in cases such as these: we don’t make innocent, stupid mistakes because we mean to make them, merely because we are human. And that isn’t a crime.