Thursday, December 26, 2019

Chewing the cud

I did indeed find myself 'ready for Christmas'.  And what a nice Christmas it was, too.  The second consecutive dry day (predictably we haven't been able to get the treble up - we're having a lot of rain today, Boxing Day) and it was more than merely dry: we were treated to stunning sunshine from dawn (seen through Hidden Pearl's ears in the second paragraph) to dusk.  Today, by contrast, is the perfect afternoon for being settled in front of the television while some really good racing is being run, although I will of course have to head outside for evening stables before too long.  Then tomorrow we'll be off to Wolverhampton, where Hidden Pearl has scraped into her race.  I'm looking forward to that.

If I have a bit of spare time at Wolverhampton, I might do some further studying of the BHA's 'Review of the Buying and Selling Practices of Bloodstock and Racehorses'.  It's a mighty document: 83 pages in the main section, plus two appendices.  I don't think that it does itself any favours by being so long.  It is fairly heavy going, albeit that there is the occasional moment of levity.  Its size and detail, though, is off-putting - and, as I'll suggest below, potentially counter-productive to its objective.  In fact, I'd suggest that Lee Mottershead, Chris Cook, Bill Barber, Howard Wright and myself might be the only people actually to have read it.  It is interesting, though, if slightly worrying and slightly confusing.

You may have read a sentence which Lee wrote in the Racing Post on Monday: "Among the themes running through the author's commentary is the normalisation of activities and attitudes which were long since banished from other trading areas and the widespread fear that has allowed them to flourish."  In the next paragraph, Lee quotes from the review, a section in which Felice quotes one breeder who told him that "the system is so endemic of 'give us a kickback' that [industry participants] don't see it as corruption, they see it as the norm".  Do you see the problem which I have?

What jars with me is that this makes no sense set against the oft-quoted figure from the report that only 5% of agents are dishonest.  Surely this makes no sense?  How many agents would there be in the British Isles?  40?  60?  No more than 60, surely?  If there are 40, then 5% of them = two.  If 60, then 5% of them = 3.  How on earth can we have reached a situation where dubious practice has become normalised and endemic if there are 38 agents doing everything right and merely two doing things wrong, if there are 57 agents doing everything right and merely three doing things wrong?  How influential can these two or three (unnamed) agents be?  It just doesn't add up.  That figure of 5% is so strange.

My other concern is that the report might have painted the BHA (and us) into a corner.  I was surprised by how much of the review is given over to unsubstantiated quotes from (unnamed) people highlighting dishonesty in (unnamed) others.  For example, "... with another stating that "corruption is rife at sales" and one industry observer commenting that the "scale of dishonesty, amounting in some cases to straightforward theft, has been eye-watering"."  Or how about "... Agents have been critical of their fellow Agents (with one describing a colleague as a "law unto himself ")."?  Or, "A significant number of breeders and/or trainers made highly critical comments around the behaviour" of some (unnamed) "Agents describing them as "beyond unethical "."?

Now the problem we have here is that this report has taken the damage done by dishonest behaviour to a higher level altogether.  We've gone from all believing that there are probably some terrible things being done to having it written down in black and white that there are indeed some terrible things being done.  If the report's aim was to limit the damage being done to the industry's reputation, so far it has done the opposite of what it is trying to do, ie it has increased the damage being done.  But it can (and aims) to rectify that.  How?  By licensing agents.  But do you see the problem here?

All the current agents will, presumably, apply to be licensed.  But unless some of them are refused licenses, then the licensing system will just be a white-wash.  It's no good telling us that some agents are beyond unethical and that the scale of dishonesty, amounting in some cases to straightforward theft, has been eye-watering.  It's one thing getting a load of unsubstantiated and unattributed complaints; quite another to print them in an official review.  But once printed in the review, they can't be unsaid.  Now that they are in print, they are doing damage that will prove very hard to undo.

The review has told us that there are rotten apples.  Few are going to believe that these apples will become unrotten for being given a license.  So this licensing system will only undo the damage which the report's contents have done if several agents (and it's hard to believe the 5% figure) are refused licenses.  And that's not going to be easy.  It's fair to assume that any agent refused a license is going to sue the BHA for restraint of trade.  And if the best evidence which the BHA can come up with is what is in the report (ie unnamed people talking about unnamed people) then the BHA won't have much chance of winning those court cases.  So we'll be worse off than we are now, both as regards racing's finances (because this whole thing will end up as having been a very expensive exercise) and its reputation.

It's going to be interesting to see how this pans out, but I am concerned.  (And I am writing this as someone who is favour of the review on the basis that the BHA is going to be finding itself under increased scrutiny from Westminster about its ability and its right to govern the sport, and that it has to make sure that it does not provide Westminster with sticks with which to beat it about failing to have 'got its house in order' - and the current poor reputation of the probity of the bloodstock world, if unaddressed, would indeed potentially be such a stick).  I only hope that the way that this document has been published does not end up meaning that the BHA has bitten off more than it can chew, and doing more harm than good.  In the interim, I hope that I haven't bitten off more than Hidden Pearl will be able to chew at Wolverhampton tomorrow.

1 comment:

neil kearns said...

Only those who have never attended bloodstock sales can believe that the process is completely honest .
The bidding process often seems punctuated by bids from persons who either don't exist or not remotely interested in actually buying the beast on offer , it seems with out a fundamental overhaul of the selling process anything else will be futile . It doesn't matter if an agent is licensed or otherwise if the sale itself is totally transparent .
I would suggest the answer maybe that any would be buyer should have to lodge funds with the auctioneers in order to obtain a numbered buying paddle and only those with an appropriate paddle would be allowed to bid .
The system of sales , and median auction races does not help the process with far too many horses being consigned to the sales purely to gain entry to these types of races and never actually intended for sale
As to agents personally I am dubious of anyone who exists purely to advise others what they should buy , if these people had any real trust in their own ability they would buy for themselves and take the racing World by storm but they are so gutless they are happy merely to take the commission , perhaps the real answer is to just ban them from the process entirely !!
Having spent a percentage of the summer reading the complete Dick Francis catalogue it is amazing how many times the villain turns out to be a dubious bloodstock agent wonder if someone in the racing upper echelons did the same ?