The Prince of Burma appreciation thread

Oscars Well. wrote: »

Two seconds in my Lucky 15 so far, I think I'll let the golf amuse me for the next few days

UrbanSea wrote: »

Hope the two of us don't get paired with anyone they always do that here. Im ****e

It is a sad reality that Irish racing does not have the best of reputations in terms of integrity as far as Joe Public is concerned. One only has to walk around a racecourse with ears open or read the racing forums on the internet to hear/read that many people do not have full confidence in the policing of our sport.

As a professional that spends his days studying Irish racing in great detail, I am happy to stand up to any naysayers and defend our sport, as the vast majority of it, particularly on the Flat, is as straight up as anywhere in Europe.

However, inevitably there will be occasions that someone takes a liberty on the racecourse. To be fair to the stewards, they tend to pick up on the majority of them and hold an inquiry, but on occasion, the results of those inquiries can prove very frustrating.

In the recent past, there have been a few occasions where horses have been give extremely “eye-catching” rides. Personally, I will always look at every possible angle to find an innocent reason for what occurred, as there almost always is a reasonable explanation if one is prepared to look for it, but on a few occasions, I found it almost impossible to make any conclusion other than the rules had been broken.

One expects such blatant instances to result in bans for all concerned and they often do, but in a handful of cases, the stewards have decided not to take action, seemingly due to post-race reports from the veterinary surgeon which reveal that the horse in question had something physically wrong with it after the race, for example lameness, coughing or having burst a blood vessel.

While I would love to discuss the individual cases here, the reader must understand that from a legal perspective, once the stewards have opted not to take any action, it very much restricts what can be written about those cases.

However, on a general point, one would naturally expect a horse that is found to be lame or having burst a blood vessel to be weakening at the finish, so if it was the case that the horse in question was still finishing so strongly under minimum pressure from the saddle that it would almost certainly have won the race granted any sort of meaningful assistance, in my opinion there are still grounds to conclude that the rules have been broken.

I am fiercely proud of our sport, but instances such as the above are not easy to reasonably defend. Perception is everything and if Irish racing is to shake off its largely unfair reputation of questionable integrity, the stewards are going to have to be more ruthless in their policing of the sport.

Imhof Tank wrote: »

Right so Kevin Blake is an armchair vet now as well as an armchair jockey is he??

This uninformed crap is just written to provoke supportive tweets from his twitterfan followers which he can print alongside his column on Saturday.

Imhof Tank wrote: »

I didn’t see the ride actually – just the blog you posted up where KB casually states ……”one would naturally expect a horse that is found to be lame or having burst a blood vessel to be weakening at the finish” as if he is some sort of scientific authority. Give me a break.

Basically he either:

1. is defaming the racecourse vet; or
2. has decided to disregard conventional veterinary wisdom on the effects of mid race lameness/busting.

Kevin and his twitter followers and lots of lads in the bookie shops and on forums who wouldn’t know how to put a head collar on may “naturally expect” a lot of things and jump to conspiracy theory conclusions.

How much did he have on the yoke anyway do you think?