Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

A couple of weeks ago my father sent me a cutting from the Telegraph, an article by Marcus Armytage looking at the BHA's Stewarding Review which apparently is in the process of phasing out amateur stewards.  My father was a steward for many years (at Kelso, Carlisle and Hamilton in the '70s when he lived in Scotland; in later years at Exeter and Taunton until he was obliged to stand down when reaching the age of 70 nine years ago) and he feels that this is not a good thing.  I cannot speak from first-hand experience as our paths never crossed disciplinarily (in fact, had I been called in at a meeting at which he had been stewarding, he would have stood himself down for that enquiry) but my guess is that he was a very good steward.

He grew up with horses and racing, rode several winners over jumps as an amateur and trained several as a permit-holder, and is a Classic-winning breeder; he has a logical mind, a keen sense of right and wrong, and a precise, exact way of looking at things and of interpreting regulations.  Nowadays there are probably fewer people in subsequent generations as well qualified and as willing to do the job without pay as he and many of his contemporaries were.  Whether that's a factor I don't know.  But, whatever the reasons, it seems as if amateur stewards are being phased out.  I don't have a strong view on this, feeling that I don't really mind who the stewards are as long as they do the job well - although I do have serious reservations about any plan to implement a new system which will definitely cost more than its predecessor but is unlikely to be any more effective or just.

So I'm fairly ambivalent about the BHA's Stewarding Review.  Or I was until yesterday.  Now I'm all for a stewarding review, if it can mean that miscarriages of justice such as took place at Lingfield yesterday will become a thing of the past.  We all complain about stewards' decisions, but by and large they are generally verdicts where the areas are grey, rather than black and white, and where the case could have been argued sensibly either way.  There are very few instances where clear-cut mistakes are made.  The decision to open an enquiry after the 'Weighed In' had been given at Ascot a few years ago was a major blunder, which justifiably saw the BHA taken to court by Geoff Banks.  (I have, incidentally, seen no evidence to suggest that the blame here lay with the amateur stewards, or that the debacle would not have occurred if only the stipendiary stewards had been in action.)

Earlier this year a Godolphin jockey (I think it was William Buick, but it might have been James Doyle) riding for John Gosden was given a suspension at Chelmsford on grounds so flimsy that, when he appealed, the BHA did not contest the appeal, so that the overturning of the ban was a formality.  But serious blunders like this or the Ascot thing are rare.  Unfortunately we saw another debacle at Lingfield yesterday, and the sport's participants deserve better than to have justice administered as unjustifiably as it was yesterday.  I don't think that I can sum it up better than Richard Hughes, who described himself as being "disgusted" and observed of the decision that "it's an abuse of power and it's wrong".

In short, Nicola Currie, who is apprenticed to Richard and who has ridden a large proportion of our runners and winners in recent months, rode Tojosimbre for her boss in the two-mile handicap.  It was the horse's first try at two miles and she was instructed to drop him out, get him to relax and to take her time.  She did this very well, other than making one mistake.  Lingfield AW is a terrible place for horses meeting bad luck in running.  When she came round the top bend, we can say (with the benefit of hindsight) that she should have pulled wide to get a clear run to make up ground up the outside as the field came up the side of the track.  She didn't: she elected to stay in, hoping for a gap to appear.  It took forever for that to happen, while the leading pack skipped clear, so by the time that one did, the principals were far in front of her and she couldn't make up enough of the ground in time.

The winner Alternate Route (who bizarrely is entered in a five-furlong handicap at Musselburgh on Sunday, which sets up the possibility of a highly irregular quick-fire double) won with his head in his chest and would have won easily however things had panned out.  Tojosimbre finished fourth, but would probably have finished second (at best) had Nicola not found herself boxed in when she wanted to start going forward.  I was actually disappointed that Tojosimbre didn't finish second anyway: the minor place-getters were out on their feet up the straight, and I was surprised that he didn't sprint up the straight better than he did after having had such a very easy time through the race.

Anyway, Nicola made a mistake.  She chose to stay in at the 900m when she should have pulled out.  That was it.  Plenty of people noticed that she made a mistake, with seemingly all bar the officials appearing to regard it as an innocent mistake.  Bizarrely, the stewards had her in as if she had ridden a 'non-trier' and suspended her for 10 days for 'failing to take all reasonable and permissible measures to achieve the best possible placing', which is the code for stopping the horse.  They conceded that she had made a real and substantial effort, but stated (correctly) that she had not made a timely one.  But, what the hell?  She was boxed in, she couldn't go forward when she wanted, and she didn't do that on purpose.

Later in the afternoon, Jamie Spencer rode a 5/2 second favourite (Manangatang) and had no room to go forward all the way up the straight.  Manangatang had a very easy race and finished eighth ("Tracked leaders in 6th, shaken up 3f out, still to make any progress when trapped behind weakening rivals over 1f out, no chance after) and Jamie was never able to make an effort - real, substantial or timely - because he never had room to do so.  Like Nicola, he found himself behind the wrong horses at the wrong time.

But there was never any suggestion that he had stopped the horse, no non-triers' ban.  He was just unlucky.  That's racing.  That's Lingfield AW.  And what is an untimely effort anyway?  If starting your move too late is an untimely effort, surely the same applies with starting your move too early, and that happens in pretty much every race, often several times?  (In fact, one could argue that it happened with the second and third horses in yesterday's race, as the sectional times, which suggest that Tojosimbre received the best-paced ride, confirm).

What annoys me, incidentally, nearly as much as the miscarriage of justice is the line which says, supposedly in defence of Nicola, that's it's understandable that she made a mistake and got herself boxed in (which she did) because she's a 7lb-claimer.  That's just silly.  What's understandable is that she made a mistake and got herself boxed in because she was riding on the AW at Lingfield, on which track the racing (or, to give it its proper title as coined by James Willoughby, the 'equine bingo') is probably more luck-in-running-dependent than at any other track in Britain.

Nobody is saying that it is understandable that Jamie Spencer got boxed in on Manangatang because he is a multiple Group One-winning dual-champion jockey, one of the best jockeys in the world.  I once trained a horse called Critical Stage for the 1997 Partnership.  He finished tailed off at Lingfield two races running, getting hopelessly boxed in and having a ludicrously easy race when he possibly could have won (whereas Tojosimbre definitely could not have won yesterday) two times in a row, ridden by Richard Hughes and Tony Culhane, who were just about the two best jockeys riding in England at the time

Critical Stage finally got a clear round the next two times (at Southwell - we'd had a bellyful of Lingfield's equine bingo by that time) and won fairly easily both times.  But nobody suggested that Richard Hughes or Tony Culhane had stopped the horse, and nobody said that it was understandable that they had got boxed in because they were so inexperienced.  I think that it is London-to-a-brick-on that Nicola's sentence will be quashed on appeal.  In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the appeal is just a rubber-stamping exercise, as I feel that the BHA may not oppose the appeal.  But that's slim consolation.

Whatever happens in the future, injustice has already been done.  Yesterday can't have been pleasant for her or good for her reputation, and it has already cost her: the stewards (needlessly, as far as I can see) did not let her leave Lingfield for nearly an hour after the race, so she got to Chelmsford ten minutes too late to take the first of her two rides there.  Roll on the Stewarding Review.  It doesn't matter whether stewarding is done by amateurs or professionals, but it needs to be done professionally.  And you don't ensure professional standards merely by paying the stewards, or prevent them merely by not paying them.