Category: Horse Racing

The Hillsin affair demonstrates that conspiring to stop a runner is one thing, but getting away with it is another

A little over two years after one of the most bizarre and downright suspicious riding performances on a British racecourse in recent decades, the British Horseracing Authority’s independent disciplinary panel confirmed last week that Dylan Kitts had deliberately stopped Hillsin from winning a handicap hurdle at Worcester on 5 July 2023, in a conspiracy with John Higgins, an associate of Hillsin’s owner, to profit from “lay” bets on the gelding.

A few days earlier, meanwhile, a 42-year-old man from Bury was arrested by Greater Manchester Police, following an investigation by the Gambling Commission “in connection with allegations of fixing horse races”.

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• Hillsin drifted from 2-1 to 11-1 before Worcester race

• Premier League player was warned off last year

A two-year investigation into the running and riding of Hillsin in a race at Worcester in July 2023 concluded on Friday when Dylan Kitts, Hillsin’s jockey, and John Higgins, an associate of the gelding’s owner, were found to have conspired to “stop” the five-year-old from winning.

Chris Honour, Hillsin’s trainer, was cleared of involvement in the conspiracy but found to have misled the local stewards at a subsequent inquiry, while Higgins’s son-in-law, the Premier League footballer Ashley Barnes, was issued with an exclusion order by the British Horseracing Authority last year after refusing to co-operate with its investigation.

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A ruling body with a board focused entirely on the long-term health and interests of the sport would be a first for racing

Around 80,000 people in Britain are employed in the horse racing industry. At least 1 million adults are estimated to have a bet on the horses in any given month of the year. And it is a very fair bet that on the morning of 13 November last year, no more than one in every 1,000 of them had even heard of Lord Allen of Kensington CBE, who was about to be unveiled as the new chair of the British Horseracing Authority, the ruling body of Britain’s second-biggest spectator sport.

Lord Allen had, after all, had very little recorded contact with the sport of kings over the course of either a glittering business career in broadcasting, his time as a Labour party insider under Ed Milliband’s leadership, or a dozen years in the House of Lords. But his lack of a racing background seemed less important than Lord Allen’s well-connected position in what had recently become the ruling political party, and his track record with events including London’s successful bid for the 2012 Olympics and, more recently, the Invictus Games. Beyond that, he could always learn on the job after assuming his new role on 1 June this year.

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An effective end to the decades-old distinction between betting and gaming feels increasingly imminent

The 12-week consultation on a Treasury proposal to “harmonise” the rate of duty levied on online betting – on racing and other sports – and casino gaming – for example, roulette and online slot machines – closed on Monday, and the British Horseracing Authority submitted “the sport’s formal response” to the process, with “the backing of British racing’s key stakeholder groups” last Friday. Whether or not the government takes any notice is, in the BHA’s view, a potential £100m question for the country’s second-biggest spectator sport.

That is roughly the mid-point of the Authority’s best- and worst-case scenarios if the proposal for a unified online gambling tax – Remote Betting & Gaming Duty, or RBGD – becomes a reality in October’s budget. The current rate of duty on betting is 15% of gross profits while online gaming is taxed at 21% of gross profits, and BHA-commissioned modelling suggests that an RBGD rate of 21% would cost the sport £66m per year in lost income from betting. A unified rate of 40%, meanwhile, could see the annual cost rise to £160m.

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• Racing’s rulers are close to agreement with jockey

• Murphy was fined £70,000 and banned from driving

Brant Dunshea, the acting chief executive of the British Horseracing Authority, revealed on Thursday that the regulator is going to apply “incredibly strict” conditions to Oisin Murphy’s riding licence following the champion jockey’s conviction on a drink-driving charge at Reading magistrates’ court last week.

Murphy was fined £70,000, one of the highest penalties ever imposed for drink-driving in the UK, and banned for 20 months following an incident near his home in Berkshire in late April when a car that Murphy was driving collided with a tree. The jockey was nearly twice the legal limit for alcohol in his breath when tested by police around seven hours after the crash.

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The consequences of the jockey being involved in a race-riding incident before he got to court were unthinkable

Before passing sentence on Oisin Murphy after the champion jockey had pleaded guilty to a drink-driving offence at Reading magistrates court on Thursday, Sam Goozee, the district judge, reminded him that he was “lucky that neither you nor your passenger nor any member of the public” had been seriously hurt when Murphy crashed his Mercedes into a tree in the early hours of 27 April.

Given the circumstances, he could fairly have added that the sport that made Murphy rich and famous has also been fortunate to emerge (relatively) unscathed from the latest nadir in his chequered career.

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British Horseracing Authority make stark warning about proposals to harmonise online and gaming duty rates

Brant Dunshea, the acting chief executive of the British Horseracing Authority, warned on Tuesday that government proposals to harmonise the rates of duty for online betting and casino-style gaming products could cost the industry tens of millions of pounds annually, remove any incentive for gambling firms to focus on racing and increasingly push punters towards illegal operators.

In what will be seen as a welcome – and perhaps overdue – move to put the BHA’s weight behind the sport’s response to the proposals, Dunshea said that racing’s governing body is “deeply concerned” by the planned harmonisation, which was initially floated in November 2023 by the former chancellor of the exchequer, Jeremy Hunt.

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• Apprentice Jamie Powell banned from riding for 28 days
• Manxman promoted to first place after BHA ruling

“There is simply no excuse for using the whip four times or more above the permitted level [of six],” Brant ­Dunshea, the British ­Horseracing Authority’s chief regulatory officer, said on Tuesday, after the ­regulator’s whip review committee had ­disqualified Alphonse Le Grande and Jamie Powell from first place in the ­Cesarewitch Handicap at ­Newmarket on Saturday. “[Disqualification] sends a clear message that we do not tolerate misuse of the whip.”

But if it is not excusable then the fact that Powell has now been stripped of the most valuable and high-profile success of his career is, to some extent at least, explicable.

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• Filly failed drug test after racing in Brighton last July
• Dunlop fined £1,000 and horse disqualified from race

The Classic-winning trainer Ed ­Dunlop has been disqualified from racing for one year, with the penalty suspended for 12 months. His filly Lucidity tested positive for a metabolite of cocaine after finishing second in a race at Brighton on 4 July 2023.

The source of the positive for the Class A drug remains unknown, but while the British Horseracing ­Authority attaches no blame to Dunlop for its presence in the filly’s system, strict rules on liability required the independent disciplinary panel to impose a disqualification – or “warning off” – on the trainer, rather than simply a suspension of his licence. The disqualification will be activated if another significant breach of the anti-doping rules occurs in the next 12 months.

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