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Alan Aitken

Are the racing stewards getting it right?

What is a concern - and has been for quite some time - is that the stewards seem to feel the need to act when an incident is visible.

The line most often trolled out to jockeys in the stewards' room is: what would the punter in the stands think when he sees that?

Well, sorry, the punter in the stands isn't a steward and second-guessing his or her unprofessional viewpoint is not the stewards' job. They do act, in part, on behalf of the punter but they must make decisions with consequences in a relatively swift time period. It's a job they must conduct with their own eyes and skills, honestly and without a care for what the Monday experts think or might think. Trying to be all things to all people never works.

On Sunday, the two situations from the fifth race stand out as question marks that highlight frequent accusations of stewarding inconsistency from jockeys.

When Douglas Whyte actively pushed out of a pocket on Vitality Champ on November 5 before finishing second to Million Success, that could have been seen as improper riding - it was when Whyte got a ban for the same thing a few seasons ago - but it was competitive riding when Million Success came back to beat him. We hope the result was not the reason that stewards issued no punishment, since the result of a race makes no difference to the prior act.

We believe that not taking action was correct - it was good, competitive riding.

Yet on Sunday, we saw more competitive riding from Brett Prebble and Shane Dye down the back straight but Prebble walked away with a six-day ban under the serious charge of improper riding, and Dye a slap on the wrist.

We hear that before the start of the season, at the usual closed doors meeting with jockeys, officials warned that 'retaliation' in races would be punished, much as the retaliator usually gets the yellow card in football, not the initiator. That must have been the thinking on Sunday, but a race is hardly a football game since stewards sit calmly to review the matter a considerable time later and with the aid of video replays.

At an early stage, leader Barracuda eased quickly as he crossed and nearly struck the rail, then several horses behind became jumbled up over the ensuing part of the race.

The short version is that Double Pleasure (Prebble) was carried wider as Dye (Sunday Delight) attempted to hold a position off the fence which was in dispute but mostly occupied by Prebble. As the shuffle-up occurred, Dye came out and bumped the other horse, Prebble then tried to bump him back in.

It is a situation which occurs frequently. With a view that competitive riding is a desirable thing, stewards usually let it go with the kind of reprimand Dye received.

Or, in Christophe Soumillon's case on Able Prince last year, without an inquiry at all.

As for Robbie Fradd's adjourned inquiry with Main Attraction from the fifth on Sunday, blink and you'll miss it. That's how quickly it will be over unless the stewards are becoming pedantic about their maps. A quick perusal of how Fradd rode Fuji Sunrise to win three races later, also from an inside gate over 1,800m, shows it to be a carbon copy. Fuji Sunrise had the stuff to win, Main Attraction didn't.

What seems the problem is that Fradd could have had Main Attraction close behind the lead from gate one - as per the speed maps used by the stewards and published in South China Morning Post racing guides. On that map, Main Attraction was the race leader on Sunday - but that is just one opinion. If stewards feel Fradd's clear intent of positioning the horse as he did, rather than as their map showed, was an error then we can show them plenty of erroneous rides to which they took no exception.

Of course, no conclusion has been drawn but the implied direction of the hearing is clear - yet it was not the ride of a man trying to ensure defeat and is the second time recently Fradd has been grilled unnecessarily over a perfectly acceptable ride.

And is due consideration being given to the horses involved in careless riding incidents?

Now, first, let us say that it is normal that difficult horses are involved - that's why they are difficult horses. They don't keep straight, they don't race tractably, they do unpredictable things.

But it was hard not to feel sorry for Eddie Lai Wai-ming getting six-days on the rotten Forte over Paul Lo Pak-hin's fall on international day. Lai was working across and did not look to his inside, where Lo was pushing into a tight spot on a turn - and it was right to punish Lai as there was certainly carelessness involved and the fallout from the mistake was severe. But perhaps a more experienced rider than Lo would not have been there at that particular time, especially knowing the horse ahead was Forte, who has more tricks than Heidi Fleiss.

If you were Lai, too, you also might have been keeping a closer watch on Forte than on others - the horse hangs right or left at any time and even caused his own fall by crossing his legs one day at Happy Valley.

But recently, when Felix Coetzee gave Regency Horse one push to take a gap and, in the first stride, the frequent 'hanger' went left and caused a check to Achiever which brought Coetzee a ban which was not as clearly jockey error. Agreed, Coetzee rode the horse along afterwards while he shifted ground and would certainly have been guilty had there been further interference, regardless of his simultaneous attempts to turn the horse right. The rules are that you stop and straighten or you are guilty of careless riding if interference occurs - you don't ride along while pulling on one rein, you don't change the whip through, you stop.

But Coetzee couldn't have stopped in the stride that did the damage because he hadn't yet started. Yes, he could have assumed Regency Horse would hang and not pushed him into the gap at all, but what would that punter in the stands have thought about that on the 2.2 favourite?

As has been said and written in many places at many times, jockeys simply want to understand where the lines are drawn. They will accept a draconian regime if that is the case and they know about it.

As top jockeys, they will of course do their best to push things to the limit but, knowing there is a hard line, cop it on the chin when they get caught.

The problem is when the limit appears to flutter and fluctuate from one race or day to another, from one ride or rider to another. Then confusion and bitterness set in.



Is inconsistency from stewards spoiling show?