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On the Rails

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Why you can trust SCMP
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Ivan Allan was a trainer of horses, a polariser of people.

As a horse trainer, he had more admirers than detractors. Perhaps as a person he piled up the latter at a considerably faster rate. But he was a great talent either way and great media fodder.

Rivals often sniped, both during and since his training career, that Allan used the media. There is no doubt that was the case and, as often as he could, it was for any personal benefit he could get.

But, unlike many in the business who fancy themselves as users or manipulators of the press, Allan was good at it. If he rang with a tip-off, it was always newsworthy and it was always right.

When Fairy King Prawn was mysteriously barred from attempting to defend his Yasuda Kinen victory and the Japanese authorities produced a spurious foot-and-mouth-disease excuse, Allan's daily information from incredibly wide-ranging sources helped this paper wage an ultimately successful campaign to force Japanese authorities to see how disingenuous their actions appeared to the rest of the world. Fairy King Prawn ran. He didn't win that year, but Allan won the war of words, as he often did.

During the isosorbide, or 'Shampoogate', case, Allan was seen at his combative, even mischievous, best before his positive was thrown out - found to be the product of an anti-fungal shampoo distributed by the Jockey Club itself.

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