In the know
Robin Oakley
It is funny what you can come to enjoy when you are in the mood. There are even pleasures to he had, I discovered last week, sloshing along a forest trail in Costa Rica with your Wellington boots full of yellow water, in a bird-watching quest for SlatyTailed Trogons, Spectacled Owls and BoatBilled Herons. When you are wading thigh deep, of course, it helps when the boots are not accompanying you to your next destination but belong to the hotel. And my guide, Luc, a Costa Rican-domiciled Belgian whose father had once improbably imported canaries into a country boasting more than 800 bird species, did slightly push his luck by repeating regularly as we were con
stantly soaked in the unseasonal monsoon which had descended on the Caribbean coast, At least I'm being paid for this.'
Betting opportunities were few and far between. When I inquired if the capital San Jose boasted a racetrack he offered to show me the show-jumping ground. Sorry, Luc, equine high-jumping in semi-evening dress isn't the same thing at all. My only wager of the week, bar the money I had left to be invested on the faller Eternal Spring at Cheltenham, was laying him three to one in beers he couldn't find me a Roseate Spoonbill before dusk as we headed down from the central cloud forest towards the Pacific coast. Never underestimate local knowledge. My Belgian friend knew a likely pond en route and a single glorious Spoonbill duly rose in a blaze of colour, circled the pool and dipped his wings in mockery before heading off to make a sucker out of another ornithological tourist. Mind you, I did have the last laugh. Luc was in shorts, I was in long trousers and the mosquitoes took chunks out of his ankles while we were tramping through the reedbeds in search of our quarry. 'At least you're being paid for this,' I reminded him. Always a gracious loser, me.
At least I seem to have picked the right week to be away. It was hardly a cheerful one for racing with champion jockey Kieron Fallon admitting to being treated for a drink problem and on-course bookies refusing to make a market on some races as a protest against the payments being demanded of them by the British Horseracing Board for data rights. Kieron Fallon is not the first jockey to fight the battle of the booze, nor will he be the last. Sometimes the sport seems to be fuelled by champagne. But given the determination he showed in recovering from a shoulder injury that would have ended most people's careers, and the way he has learned to control the temper which cost him dearly in earlier days. I believe Kieran will crack this problem too. If you can find anyone to give you better than 6-4 against him being champion again this year then take it. But Fallon's revelation, after the problems suffered earlier by Timmy Murphy and Dean Gallagher, serves to highlight the strains of life for the one class of publicly performing athletes who have to reach a pinnacle of skill and effort while at the same time torturing themselves down to an unnatural weight.
My week away also saw news of the Jockey Club's efforts to clamp down on racing security after all the bad publicity we saw in 2002. Personally, I applaud the efforts to forbid trainers from laying horses (i.e. accepting bets against them) on the betting exchanges and I hope that the government will help racing clean up its act by making the disclosure of betting records to relevant authorities compulsory. There is a danger of driving some betting underground by doing so. But our sport needs to be seen to be clean and some price has to be paid for enforcing integrity.
More controversially the Jockey Club has announced plans, following the revelations over the Wright Gang affair, to monitor the weighing room on closed circuit TV and to impose restrictions on the use of mobile phones by jockeys on the racecourse during racing hours. Naturally, some jockeys, led by Philip Robinson, are opposing that and I can see the problem. Jockeys need to make frequent calls to confirm riding and travel arrangements. When riders are injured or ill and trainers have to change plans at short notice, then jockeys need to be accessible to their agents. I remember one day at Kempton recently when, with stable jockey Mick Fitzgerald out and his substitute Norman Williamson injured in a fall, Nicky Henderson had to make several switches in a big handicap hurdle through agent Dave Roberts.
Vince Slattery, who rides on the flat and over jumps, told the Racing Post: 'You take things away from kids if they are misbehaving, but we're only trying to work from day to day. Taking away our phones makes us look guilty of something. I'm doomed without my phone.' Fair point. But some jockeys have been using the mobiles to call the wrong people at the wrong time. And in a number of other racing countries such as Japan or Hong Kong jockeys seen using mobile phones on course have them confiscated. I am sure a reasonable set of rules can be worked out. And for me there is a clincher. There is no more passionate and terrier-like defender of the guys in the saddle than Michael Caulfield, chief executive of the Jockeys Association, and he is now advising jockeys to accept some restrictions. He can see the riders' practical problems and is still in there negotiating on the details but he can see the wider picture too. This tends to be a pretty pro-jockey column, but if Michael Caulfield is willing to bow to the inevitable then the jockeys should too.
Previous page
