In the aftermath of just about any event, there is always someone who knew it was coming and the dropping of the Singapore international races was no different.

But life isn't as simple as that.

It's like a race. If you thought Golden Lucky Win Win would win and then he did, then it seems obvious and hard to believe everyone didn't know. The reality is somewhat different - one or two circumstances change and suddenly the incredibly obvious event outcome doesn't happen. And that we see constantly in races, and in life if you're watching.

The [Singapore Turf] Club's own stated reason for dropping the races - that whatever goals the club had set itself at their inception had now been achieved and so it was time to finish up - just doesn't wash 

So the knowledge or gut-feeling, or call it what you will, that the Singapore International Airlines (SIA) Cup and KrisFlyer Sprint were inherently doomed might not be reading enough into it.

When the news came through, some immediately posited that the overwhelming Hong Kong domination of the Singapore races for the past three years assured their early demise, but that makes no sense.

Everyone puts on international races hoping for foreign participation, which brings the likelihood that someone somewhere, and who thinks he has a better horse than yours, likes the look of the race and the stake money.

READ MORE: What does bombshell mean for Hong Kong?

If foreigners coming and taking your money seems too much to bear then there are other options. The Singapore Turf Club, for example, has absolute control of the conditions of its races and could simply have placed a money won, international rating or peak performance cap on the visitors - as Hong Kong did in its early days - to assist its own runners to be highly competitive and keep some, maybe all of the prize money at home.

It chose not to, so the conclusion to be drawn is that the club wanted serious foreign horses despite knowing they would be hard for the locals to handle. The club could even had dropped the prize money.

But, between the high prize money and the quality visitors, the club itself obviously had felt for some years that the international profile and attention gained by staging the two internationals was desirable.

The club's own stated reason for dropping the races - that whatever goals the club had set itself at their inception had now been achieved and so it was time to finish up - just doesn't wash at all. By the same kind of logic, they should have been scrapped years ago.

There was also a theory that Singapore Airlines, the meeting sponsor, didn't feel it was getting enough out of its investment in what was, until February this year, the richest race at Kranji every year.

Yes, at S$3.05 million (HK$16.6 million) in prize money, the CECF Singapore Cup at the China Horse Club's China Equine Cultural Festival meeting in February was the richest race ever run in the Lion City. It was a curious type of race, closed to the participation of anyone outside of the China Horse Club itself, so the Singapore Turf Club basically rented out Kranji to let the CHC people race amongst themselves for this exorbitant money put up by themselves. For a motley crew of horses of widely varying, even dubious, worth.

All well and good, but it trumped by S$50,000 (HK$270,000) the prize money for the SIA Cup, a legitimate international contest attracting Group One standard horses.

We can see how, if Singapore Airlines was already questioning its financial involvement, this might have pushed it over the edge.

No sponsor, no race; at least at those prize-money levels, it seems. Or maybe Singapore could turn to the deep-pocketed China Horse Club members to sponsor a real showpiece race at Kranji? There's a date in May available.


Plenty to debate when it comes to crucial protests

Protests. Can't live with them, can't seem to shake them off.

They've been getting plenty of air time lately due to two apparently contentious objections in Group One races somewhere west of France, in which the viewers were kept on the edge of their seats even after the outcomes had been correctly decided on the day. Hey, who knew they even had stewards in British racing? We thought the breeders, jockeys and trainers ran the place.

But Monday's protest in a more humble setting - an average Class Four straight race at Sha Tin - probably was a good case study of a protest here.

Doubtless, backers of Winner St Paul's and indeed Douglas Whyte, who rode the horse, will have been aggrieved at not getting the result. 1. There was interference. 2. It caused Winner St Paul's to lose more than a length at an early stage of the race. 3. It was caused, without question, by London Master (Gerald Mosse).

The two then hit the line with a nose between them - in fact, Winner St Paul's could have saved everybody the anguish and hurt feelings if he had just acted like a horse in the last 50m and not some inane giraffe waving his head around in the breeze. Had he carried his head properly, he would have won the photo - as many still thought he did - and we would not be having this conversation. Alas, he didn't. If it were as simple as lose a length or more at the 900m mark equals a length or more at the finish, the maths has him home but it isn't and that's where the stewards' interpretation of what happened afterwards comes in.

We wonder if crucial to their decision was that Whyte, at the time of the squeeze, did not appear on the replay to want the position that Mosse took in front of him, causing the interference in so doing.

In other words, that Whyte was happy for Mosse to take the position in front of him on the outside rail, even if he wasn't thrilled with the rough manner of the taking - that would play against the argument that Winner St Paul's was cost his rightful place in the running order on the outside rail. That was how it looked but we spoke to Whyte later about it and he said that he did actually want the spot but wasn't wanting to push his horse to hold it, for fear of Winner St Paul's over-racing. Presumably that point was made in the hearing.

So this was by no means cut and dried either way but the incident being so far from the finish mitigated against it being upheld when stewards considered whatever opportunities to beat home London Master were available to, and not taken by, the runner up in the 50-odd seconds after the incident.

Comments0Comments