BHA Lodges Master Objection

[OddDog]

From the Sporting Life website:

An objection has been lodged by the British Horseracing Authority against The Young Master following his controversial success in the Badger Ales Trophy at Wincanton on Saturday. It emerged in the aftermath of what was a seven-length win for the Neil Mulholland-trained five-year-old that the gelding was in fact ineligible to run under the conditions of the race, having only had two previous runs over fences when three were required.

The matter will be considered by the disciplinary panel of the BHA, possibly on Thursday this week.

The horse holds an engagement at Cheltenham on Friday, and the BHA said it was "aware that clarity needs to be provided regarding the horse's handicap mark, and also whether the horse will be required to carry a penalty should it take up its entry on Friday."

It is expected the BHA will confirm both issues following the objection hearing, and that in the meantime the horse's rating will be reassessed.

A statement from the BHA read: "BHA, in conjunction with Weatherbys, investigated how this error occurred, and can confirm that a computer systems failure is the reason that the entries system did not flag the horse as being not qualified to run. Further assessment of the systems is being undertaken, and if necessary, system changes will be made to ensure this does not happen again.

"The BHA/Weatherbys entries system is designed as an aid to trainers but is not designed to override the requirements of Rule (C)37. It remains the trainer's responsibility to ensure a horse is not declared for a race for which it is not qualified."

The Young Master was ridden by Barry Geraghty, who wrote in his blog for At The Races: "The win of The Young Master in the Badger Ales Trophy should have announced him as a very smart chaser for Neil Mulholland.

"But it transpired after his easy win over a competitive field that he wasn't qualified to run because it was a Class 1 handicap and under the rules he had to have run in three chases to qualify and not two as was the case.

"Now the owners face losing the prize money and getting a big hike in the horse's rating which will make further success tricky.

"That's a real double whammy and doesn't seem fair to me."

Some points to make here:

(1) The rule itself - a Class 1 Handicap requires a horse to have run in 3 previous chases in order to be eligible. A sensible rule to make sure that the big handicaps are not marred by inexperienced chasers getting in the way. Applying hindsight here, The Young Master has romped away with the race so the aim of the rule was negated as he clearly had the right level of experience and talent to be competitive.

(2) The responsible parties: Neil Mulholland should be disciplined for this. As the trainer he is ultimately responsible and should have known better, and it begs the question as to whether this really was an innocent mistake, or something else. But also the BHA/Weatherbys need to take some responsibility - to blame a computer error is dodging the issue. This was a big Saturday afternoon handicap, some human being should have been checking this.

(3) Horse / jockey / owner: The innocent victims. The owners have paid their money to take their chance. The horse has put up a great performance and the jockey has given him a peach of a ride. The suggestion that the horse may be stripped of the race but ALSO given a hike in the weights for winning is absolutely monstrous.

The BHA will need to tread very carefully here - they need to take action but need to be fair and reasonable, without appearing overbearing and petty.

Suggestion: Result stands, horse gets a new handicap mark, Mulholland cops a fine and they use the money to fix their computer system.

 

[stick]

Connections had no idea odddy. Sadly the BHA have no choice but to disqualify the horse and I guarantee you that the handicapper will reassess the horses mark based on this performance.
What I find most infuriating is that a horse has even got to start in a race that it is not qualified for. Surely Weatherbys owe the owner an apology and compensation.
Massive faux pas by the trainer who is rightly mortified.

 

[hawkeye]

Well the rule states it is the responsibility of the trainer to make sure the horse is qualified to run, so it has to fall on him. A substantial fine to him, and mark it down to experience. Horse keeps the race, gets a new handicap mark and Mulholland warned that if it happens again he will have the book thrown at him.

 

[Chaninbar]

Well the rule states it is the responsibility of the trainer to make sure the horse is qualified to run, so it has to fall on him. A substantial fine to him, and mark it down to experience. Horse keeps the race, gets a new handicap mark and Mulholland warned that if it happens again he will have the book thrown at him.

And Mulholland made to say something interesting on his blog. His utterances are a sure fire cure for insomnia.

 

[Bluesky9]

Although this is a very unfortunate and thankfully rare incident it's very clear that the blame begins and ends with the trainer. Race entries are a part of the running of the stable and each race has requirements that must be satisfied to ensure the horse eligible to participate in the race. As stated any computer system could only ever be there as a back up and responsibility has always and will always rest with the trainer. There can be no bending of the rules on this as it would set precedents that you could be sure will cause many problems in the future. The horse must lose the race.

I would however question if his rating should rise as the horse's participation has been voided within this race and the handicapper must surely only be able to assess races in which the horse has officially participated in. I feel he should have no penalty and be able to run at the mark he had before Saturday.

I would actually make any fine to the trainer minimal as losing the race is no doubt punishment enough, I would also imagine the trainer will find some way of compensating the connections for such an error, perhaps training him for the rest of the season without training fees, only race day costs, farriers and vets. This would seem a nice gesture as he has cost them something in the region of 30k I believe.

Another point would be that the connections of the other placed horses, those eligible for prize money would likely want someone to sue as they have been denied prize money by an ineligible opponent.

 

[Ron]

Whilst the trainer is responsible for making correct entries it is not realistic to assume that every entry will be correct. Therefore it should be the ultimate responsibility of the race administrators to check all entries and return invalid ones. Christ if our (show we used to run) entry system was based on the entries being correct it would have been a disaster. It isn't that difficult to check number of races against number required to qualify. Computer system error my arse . The officials ****ed up and they should accept responsibility. There is no way 100% of the responsibility can be placed on the trainer.

Anyway. they can't have it both ways. Either the horse keeps the race and it gets a new handicap mark or it doesn't keep the race. The only way they can take the race away is to deem the horse not to have taken part, in which case the form should be ignored and the handicap should remain unchanged as if it hadn't run.

I hope connections get a good solicitor on this.

 

[Bluesky9]

No point wasting money on legal fees Ron, not a leg to stand on. I agree there should and it appears were measures by the authorities to prevent such a thing but if one gets through you cannot have the horse keeping it. I think it is a case of a race is opened up for entries with a set of criteria for competing, the trainers job is to enter only qualified to race under the rules of the race. To have a situation in which the trainer was absolved of the responsibility of his horses eligibility would be all wrong.

How did this particular case come to light? I have only heard the aftermath.

 

[stick]

I think the C4 racing team spotted the error Bluesky!

 

[Ron]

No point wasting money on legal fees Ron, not a leg to stand on. I agree there should and it appears were measures by the authorities to prevent such a thing but if one gets through you cannot have the horse keeping it. I think it is a case of a race is opened up for entries with a set of criteria for competing, the trainers job is to enter only qualified to race under the rules of the race. To have a situation in which the trainer was absolved of the responsibility of his horses eligibility would be all wrong.

How did this particular case come to light? I have only heard the aftermath.

If they take the race away, fair enough but in that case they should not touch the handicap mark as the horse doesn't legally have the form to warrant a reassessment. I'd love to know how many entries they return as invalid. Hiding behind a computer system error is no excuse and they should take into account that this would not have happened had they vetted entries correctly. Maybe a bunch of trainers should all enter horses that are ineligible and see if they are all allowed to run and then all disqualified. What a shambles. We have to accept that trainers can, once in a while, make a genuine mistake and it is up to the Officials to spot them.

There will have been thousands and thousands of entries every year and there is no way every one will have been correct. I wonder how many have slipped through unnoticed. And what would they do now if they carried out an audit and found some?

I would certainly look for legal advice if they took away the race AND reassessed the horse's handicap. The former may not be debatable but the latter is.

 

[Bluesky9]

I agree Ron they should not touch his handicap mark as his participation is void.

As a race fan I would love to see him keep the race as he thoroughly deserved it and my remarks are from a legal perspective only. There was a similar case in football at the start of the season when the polish team completely destroyed Celtic and yet were found to have fielded a technically ineligible player for about 4 minutes and with no significance to the match at all and yet they had the match taken away. Every football fan knew that the Polish team deserved and should keep the result but also knew they could not be allowed to as UEFA would have being sued for not sticking to their own rules. I had hoped that Celtic would have refused to accept the win but of course they were not obliged to and did not. In this case were I the connections of the runner up I would at least make a statement to the effect that I felt the winner should keep the race as he won on merit and the rule broken gave him no advantage whatsoever. These organisations however simply must stick to their rules as otherwise leave themselves exposed to litigation. Stick mentioned that it was Channel 4 who noticed it, I must say if I were them and noted that no advantage had been gained I think I would have kept quiet.

 

[PNkt]

In my opinion this incident is due to the staff cuts that have been made at Weatherbys in recent years. I deal with the entries department on a pretty regular basis, when I'm at work and can tell you now they work incredibly hard. Entries are made in one of two ways, online or by telephone. Telephone entries are taken by a team of phone handlers (don't know how many man the phones these days) and then the entries are checked by just 2 people, one full-time and one part-time. There used to be 5 people checking entries but 3 have left/been made redundant over the last year or two.

Obviously its impossible for 2 people to manually check every single entry when you consider how many races they have to handle on a daily basis - as well as entries they have the declarations to deal with and the weight allocations for each race. They rely on the computer system, which is immense and incredibly complicated, to flag up any non-qualified horses and they then manually double check the rejections before calling the trainer to let them know.

Don't exonerate the trainer completely, it's a well known fact that many of them don't bother to read the race conditions in full before making an entry. My infamous run-in with Nicky Henderson is a case in point - he ran a mare in what he though was a qualifier for a mares only hurdle Final when it was actually a qualifier for an open hurdle Final that just happened to be restricted to mares. The race conditions explicitly stated which race this was a qualifier for, but he didn't read them properly and tried to pin the blame on me/my office!

 

[Ron]

Morning Princess. The entry systems are only complicated if they haven't been designed properly (unfortunately true of most systems I seem to come across); the volume is not relevant assuming an extremely high %age of entries are valid. However, on the clerical side, they should staff according to workload.

Re Nicky Henderson, how on earth he could have blamed your staff for not knowing what he intended to qualify for is incomprehensible. If you want to qualify for something you start there and look at the qualifiers for it. He was just being a twit, probably trying to cover his back with the owner for his stupid mistake.

 

[Cyclonic]

Maybe it was after mid-day.

 

[stick]

Connections had no idea odddy. Sadly the BHA have no choice but to disqualify the horse and I guarantee you that the handicapper will reassess the horses mark based on this performance.
What I find most infuriating is that a horse has even got to start in a race that it is not qualified for. Surely Weatherbys owe the owner an apology and compensation.
Massive faux pas by the trainer who is rightly mortified.

Disqualified and raised a whopping 14lbs....ouch! I told you so, but very kindly Weatherbys have reimbursed the owners the entry fee.......that's UK racing and its authorities for ya!

 

[Bluesky9]

These owners must be gutted. How often do you find yourself able to win a valuable race like that, then you lose it and also lose the stone you potentially had in hand on your handicap mark for the sum total of nothing. I agree with them losing the race but not the handicap mark going up.

On a point of handicapping I have a question for any of the more informed jumps men.

I backed a horse today called Prettyasapicture in the 1.40 at Taunton. The horse was going to win without doubt as was travelling double over everything else, Jockey asked her to go on at the second last at which the horse overreached and came down. There is no doubt she was going to win, and likely by 10 lengths. Will the handicapper put the horse up for that even though he will have to do as I have and predict an outcome? or will he leave the mark untouched as the horse fell? essentially do handicappers predict outcomes of fallers in National hunt and assess accordingly?

 

[stick]

ACTUAL PERFORMANCE VERSUS POTENTIAL PERFORMANCE
Handicapping – if it is to achieve its aim of producing competitive races where horses have been allocated weights to equalise their chance of winning, and therefore are attractive for people to run their horses in and for people to bet on – cannot, by definition, be an exact science. Handicap ratings cannot be compiled solely based on what a horse had actually achieved, but, to some degree, must be based on what the Handicapper believed the horse might have achieved if, for example, it had not fallen at the last fence or had not suffered interference, or had been ridden out to the line when winning easily.
It is hard to argue that it is unfair to put up the rating of a horse that falls at the last fence when clear, for example, because if it were to meet the same horses again on the same terms, most people would judge it to be favoured by the revised weights thus conflicting with the overarching principles followed by the Handicappers. Given the Handicappers’ principal aim is to give horses an equal chance in future races, they have to apply their judgement when allocating handicap ratings and not simply confine their ratings to what the horse actually achieved. The case of a last fence faller having its rating raised by the Handicapper may be considered to be ‘unfortunate’ for the associated connections rather than ‘unfair’, and handicap ratings should always be aiming to make future races as competitive as possible.

 

[Ron]

Trainer Neil Mulholland is keen to look to the future after his controversial Wincanton winner The Young Master was disqualified from Saturday's Badger Ales Trophy.

It emerged in the aftermath of what was an impressive seven-length win for the five-year-old in the prestigious handicap that the gelding was ineligible to run under the conditions of the race, having only had two previous runs over fences when three were required.

The British Horseracing Authority on Monday lodged an objection and, following a disciplinary panel hearing on Thursday morning, The Young Master was disqualified.

Mulholland was also ordered to pay a £250 fine.

In normal circumstances, if a horse is entered in a race for which he is not qualified, the trainer is informed by Weatherbys, but that was not the case on this occasion.

The Somerset-based trainer has no qualms about the disqualification, but feels aggrieved that he has taken the brunt of the blame for the incident.

Mulholland said: "I obviously had to reply to the objection when it came through at the start of the week and I agreed with it. I knew the horse was going to get disqualified and he was entitled to get the disqualified.

"The only problem I have with it is that Weatherbys have accepted their computer system failed, but there was nobody from Weatherbys at the hearing today and I'm being painted the bad guy.

"There were 1,500 horses last year that were entered in races they weren't qualified for. Unfortunately this one has slipped through the net.

"There were 32 entries for the last race at Cheltenham tomorrow and two of them weren't qualified. Do you really think if Weatherbys hadn't let their trainers know they weren't qualified to run they wouldn't have declared?

"Weatherbys changed their systems in September and changes are now going to be made again after what's happened. Mr Weatherby himself rang the horse's owner to apologise and they are obviously going to reimburse his entry fees.

"I just want to move on from the whole thing now and the good thing is we have a horse good enough to win a race like that (Badger Ales), which is fantastic."

Not only has The Young Master been disqualified, but the BHA have confirmed his run will be taken into account by the handicapper and he has been raised 14lb.

Mulholland did have the opportunity to run his charge under a 7lb penalty in Friday's Opus Energy Amateur Riders' Handicap Chase at Cheltenham, but decided against turning him out quickly.

"He came out of the race unbelievably well. I rode him myself on Monday morning and he was probably the freshest horse in the yard," said Mulholland.

"He feels like he's getting better all the time and if he keeps improving, he's not going to be a handicapper for long. He'll be running in the better novice races.

"I didn't declare him for the race on Friday as I thought it was the wrong thing to do for the horse and for the sport.

"The people at the BHA said I should run him because we know he's going to be disqualified from the Wincanton race and go up a lot in the weights, but I have to put my horse first and you can imagine what the reaction would have been if we had run him at Cheltenham and something went wrong.

"Everyone would have been questioning why I was running the horse again so quickly and the whole thing has had enough bad publicity as it is."

Mulholland is keen to let the dust settle before making future plans for his exciting chaser.

He said: "I don't know where we'll go with him next. I just wanted to get today out of the way and now we can move on.

"Hopefully there's a lot to look forward to."

The BHA's director of racing Ruth Quinn admits the decision to reassess The Young Master's mark despite his disqualification will be viewed as a "hard line" by some, but she believes it is the right call in the interests of the sport.

She said: "Once it had been ascertained that the horse was not qualified to run in the race it was a straightforward matter that the horse should be disqualified.

"Any other course of action would have been contrary to the Rules and patently unfair to connections of the other runners in the race.

"It also then followed that Neil Mulholland had to be found in breach of the Rules as they are very clear that it is the trainer's responsibility to ensure that a horse is qualified to run in any race.

"However, it is also evident that there were other issues at play here. Weatherbys has an IT system which is designed to alert trainers when they have entered a horse that is not qualified.

"While this does not override the trainer's responsibility under the Rules, it is a service which BHA, via Weatherbys, provides to the industry and it is clear that that service did not work as it should on this occasion.

"Not only is this a service designed to assist trainers, but it is also part of our collective responsibility to connections of horses and punters to ensure that incidents such as this do not occur. The outcome of Saturday's race is simply not satisfactory for the betting public.

"We are satisfied with the explanation provided by Weatherbys and that the coding error on the administration system has now been fixed. It is important that such an incident does not occur again. We also support Weatherbys' decision to compensate the owner for the cost of their entry fee and race day expenses.

"Separately BHA has made a decision to reassess The Young Master's handicap mark based on the evidence of the Badger Ales Trophy. We have a duty to the sport as a whole, including punters and other horsemen, and that duty is not played out by not taking account of the form from Saturday's race.

"We appreciate that this may be seen as a hard line by some, but we are confident that in the best interests of the sport it is the correct decision. It is borne out by other precedents of horses being disqualified - for example for taking the wrong course - then being reassessed off the back of these performances.

"All of the issues outlined here were available to the Disciplinary Panel for consideration and potential mitigation in determining the penalty imposed on Neil Mulholland."

There was some consolation for Mulholland when his winning run continued in the Winning Post Real Ale Handicap Hurdle at Taunton on Thursday.

Mulholland's runner Johns Luck (7-2) was cantering from some way out and just had to be nudged out three-quarters of a length ahead of 3-1 favourite Unefille De Guye.


In the best interests of sport my arse. Run void - form void. I'm annoyed really that the connections haven't taken legal action against the re-assessment. So, he would have looked well handicapped next time out. So what, there have been plenty of handicap snips where horses have come into a race "pounds in" prior to re-handicapping, and lost.

Are they going to look into all those other ineligible runners. Like f** they will. It's a disgrace. Typical incompetent authorities.

Comments in RP

CommentsUser comment
They should fine the bha!
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11:34pm - 13 Nov 14withicecream, United Kingdom
Sorry folks but rules are rules and the trainer has responsibility to adhere to them, an expensive lesson to learn. hopefully the owner will have more sense than to take it further when the problem lies closer to home.
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11:13pm - 13 Nov 14tigeroo, United Kingdom
The Racing Horse says that the rules have been breached and that is the end of the story. I do not like it but we have to have rules or what is left?
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11:01pm - 13 Nov 14pabloluna, United Kingdom
distance mess being excused by "unfortunate sequence of events", "coding error" and nobody at Wetherby racecourse to blame. The BHA couldn''t run a raffle, let alone run Racing. Who''s in charge? Laurel & Hardy and the Marx Brothers?
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09:42pm - 13 Nov 14Sejanus, United Kingdom
Dear oh dear oh dear. In RP comments, I often use the phrase "the clowns who run racing" but even I can scarcely believe that their utter incompetence would be laid bare twice in one day. So, we have the Badger Ales farce AND the Wetherby
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09:36pm - 13 Nov 14Sejanus, United Kingdom
wrong wrong wrong. sad for anyone that loves this great sport
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08:45pm - 13 Nov 14gazovic, United Kingdom
What a load of boxxox, the BHAs site was not working as it should, and when trainers read the conditions for a race, (conditions are so complicated) they CAN be excused for making what was a small error, but the BHA SHOULD HAVE PICKED IT UP and advised NM
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07:45pm - 13 Nov 14oldracinggit,
As far as The Young Master is concerned he didn''t run in the race - he couldn''t win the race -he was NOT qualified, how can he therefore be qualified for a rating increase? The word "sport" was used... Not very sporting never mind fair!
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07:39pm - 13 Nov 14dale37, United Kingdom
A horse who falls when clear can go up in the handicap so why not this one? Seems straightforward. Bad luck to connections YOUR trainer made a mistake.
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07:17pm - 13 Nov 14johnhynes, United Kingdom
I''ll bet you 8/15 that the incoming boss of BHA will sort this out!
Report abuse
07:16pm - 13 Nov 14butterwickkid, United Kingdom
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[OddDog]

An absolute disgrace. Not only from a sporting perspective, but also from a punting perspective. Whilst I was fortunate enough to be on the "winner", I would be absolutely gutted if I had backed the 2nd placed horse (now promoted to first).

 

[Cyclonic]

Am I right here, the animal is going up a stone for not winning a race?

 

[NassauBoard]

It did win the race though. Just not legally.