The turf

Robin Oakley

Wednesday, 1st October 2008

Team tactics

An old friend in journalism, well aware that he was prone to conspiracy theories, especially where his own career was concerned, used to say to me, ‘Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean the bastards aren’t out to get me.’ So were the authorities out to get Aidan O’Brien when they convicted him and jockey Colm O’Donoghue of team tactics in the recent Juddmonte International, won by Duke of Marmalade?

I ask because some of the best-respected voices in racing have suggested that the motivation for the action against O’Brien was jealousy, because English trainers are having a comparatively poor season while O’Brien and his Ballydoyle team have already secured a phenomenal 20 Group One successes this season. Others have suggested that, while racing has been receiving enough bad publicity down at the lower end, the authorities should not have further besmirched its face by suggesting that there was something dodgy about one of the best races in the calendar, especially when it was almost certainly won by the best horse contesting it.

On this one you can count me in with the powers that be. I am a fervent admirer of Aidan O’Brien and of his stable jockey Johnny Murtagh. The modest, softly spoken O’Brien is the sort who would not only escort old ladies across the road but would also hold up the traffic to return a dropped fiver to a millionaire. But I think they were rightly taken to task by the British Horseracing Authority and that they were lucky not to have been penalised more heavily than they were.

Let us go back to basics. Racing is not a team sport. It is all about one horse and jockey coming past the finishing post first.

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