Taken For A Ride - Point to Point Racing

From Brian Radfords book "Taken For A Ride"

Point to Point Racing

Point-to-Point racing generally enjoys the clean healthy image of ruddy-faced farmers and their families enjoying good, healthy banter, and honest rivalry between hunters competing in the open countryside. But just how far is this reputation deserved?  Records reveal a wide range of discrediting cases which extend from ringers to dope, as well as the blatant stopping of horses to land big bets.

One day in 1967 the large crowd at the Garth and South Berkshire Hunt at Tweseldown near Aldershot could hardly believe their eyes. Bobby Bunting, ridden by thirty-two-year-old amateur George Ware, was galloping home by twenty lengths and the bay mare had never won a race in her life! Her form was appalling. In her two appearances the previous year, she had been pulled up each time.

Before the 'off' at Tweseldown her price had plunged from 10-1 to 5-2, and the grumbling bookmakers were not long in asking questions. Their suspicions were well-founded, for it turned out that it was not the useless Bobby Bunting that the crowd had cheered home, but a ringer called Complete Treasure, a winner of ten races in a long and distinguished career.

The fascinating story unfolded at Hampshire Quarter Sessions in Winchester, where George Ware, a farmer and horse dealer of Crookham, near Newbury, was fined one hundred pounds for receiving thirty pounds in prize-money by falsely pretending that Complete Treasure was Bobby Bunting. It transpired that Ware borrowed Complete Treasure for the day from a training stable at Marlborough, saying that he wanted it to gallop with another horse. Eric Foster said in evidence that he trained Complete Treasure and occasionally lent it to Ware for schooling, but never to race. The horse was owned by champion amateur rider Chris Collins, who said at the time: 'If anything did take place, it was certainly without my knowledge and consent.' When interviewed, Ware had told the police that he had sold Bobby Bunting shortly after the race because she was lame, but the horse was never found. It was generally assumed that she had been taken to a slaughter-house and ended up as dog meat.

Later on that year, racehorse owner Cyril Light, a builder from Pyecombe near Brighton, won the Adjacent Maiden Chase at the Bridge Hunt point-to-point with a horse called Striker, although he knew its correct name was Midas Well, and that it had raced under Rules. The horse described as Striker won by a distance from Torquil, the only other runner to finish.

Light appeared before the Jockey Club stewards on 30 November 1967, and was warned off all courses where National Hunt racing was scheduled to take place. The stewards were satisfied that Light had provided them with false information regarding the pedigree and purchase of the horse when applying for the name Striker.

Though there were many other well-informed rumours of point-to-point ringers, it was exactly ten years before the next case officially came along. In 1977, reliable informants tipped off the Jockey Club that the horse running under the name of Red Keidi was, in fact, a former steeplechaser called My Virginian, three times a winner under Rules.

On 12 February 1977, Red Keidi won the Hunt Open at the Staff College and RMA Draghounds meeting at Tweseldown. Backed from 7-1 to 2-1, he sauntered home by six lengths, carrying a colossal fourteen pounds in overweight. His form then suddenly slumped, and he was well beaten in his next four races. But the Tweseldown gamble was not forgotten, and a year later, in a dramatic, well prepared operation, members of the Jockey Club's detective agency, Racecourse Security Services, mixed with the crowd at the Tickham Hunt near Sittingbourne in Kent and, as the runners assembled for the Open race, they burst into the parade-ring and seized the horse. He was then quickly pushed into a box and driven to the Military Academy Stables in Aldershot.

On 4 April 1979, the Jockey Club's disciplinary committee found that Eric Cordery, a racehorse owner and car salesman, and Raymond Butcher, the owner of a deep-freeze centre, had committed various breaches of the Rules governing point-to-points concerning the identification and ownership of the horse that ran as Red Keidi during the seasons of 1977 and 1978. In one of the stiffest sentences for some time, the committee disqualified Cordery for seven years and fined him five hundred pounds. They also fined Butcher the same amount, and disqualified My Virginian for five years. She would be seventeen by the time of her comeback.

The Jockey Club's forensic department is crammed with some of the most sophisticated detection equipment available anywhere in the world. Only very rarely do they fail to come up with the answers. They came close to defeat in April 1979, when they were sent a urine sample taken from Tartan Prince, after the horse had finished second in a Hunters Chase at Stratford. Tartan Prince, the 7-2 favourite, had looked a certain winner as he jumped the last fence in front, but his supporters were soon groaning as he slowed dramatically on the run-in and was beaten by a length and a half. On receiving the sample, the analysts were confronted with a substance they had never seen before. In the end, after considerable research, they decided the drug was Pyrantol, a substance which couldn't be traced to normal feeding and could, by its nature, affect the racing performance of the horse. Having established the name of the drug, they were then able to trace its source, a proprietary brand of wormer called Strongid-P Paste.

Satisfied that they had a case to consider, the disciplinary committee interviewed the horse's owner, Richard Williams of Barry, and fined him three hundred pounds. At that time, Tartan Prince was being privately trained at the livery stable of Bill Bryan in Herefordshire, and the committee decided that it was he who administered the substance, and fined him one hundred pounds.

Racecourse Security Services and the disciplinary committee were equally baffled in August 1978 after a urine sample taken from a horse called Osgodby Coppice was found to contain Phenylbutazone, a pain-killing drug. The gelding was tested after winning the Restricted Members race at the Melton Hunt Club meeting at Garthorpe in Leicestershire. Owned and trained by A.R. Adcock, the horse had won by a length and a half, and paid sixty-seven pence on the Tote.

After considering evidence from Adcock, the committee were unable to establish where the drug came from. Nevertheless, they disqualified Osgodby Coppice and fined Adcock fifty pounds for not informing the Jockey Club that the horse, which was qualified from his stable, had been transferred to a livery yard without official permission.

It proved a busy day for the committee, who later sat through a second point-to-point inquiry. Samples taken from the gelding Hello Louis after it won the Sporting Chronicle championship final at Newcastle showed the presence of caffeine and theobromine. The committee studied evidence from Hello Louis's trainer, Mrs Mary Reveley, of Saltburn in Yorkshire, and were satisfied that the source of the drug was Chapsaltz, which the makers explained had been affected by a manufacturing error. Though Hello Louis was disqualified, Mrs Reveley escaped without a penalty.

Of course, the system of dope-testing at point-to-points differs enormously from what takes place under Rules, where a minimum of four routine tests are taken at every meeting. Dope tests are taken only occasionally at point-to-points, and always without warning. The van and staff just turn up and park in a field. On one Saturday in the late seventies, a well-known trainer withdrew all his five horses after arriving at the course to find that the dope unit was present.

A rumpus erupted in South Wales in the seventies over an eight-year-old chestnut called Quip, after it had won the Maiden event at the Pentyrch Hunt. Quip had failed to complete the course in his three previous races, twice being pulled up when tailed off, and once running off the track. Each time he had started at 33-1. Yet at Pentyrch his odds were never better than 7-1, and he ran his previous races right into the ground. In a thrilling finish he dead-heated with the highly rated Prince Haven, later to become one of the best point-to-pointers in Wales.

Suspicion was inevitable - and justified. Far from being a maiden, it soon emerged that Quip was not even a novice. The horse had won six races on the Flat in Scandinavia, including the Danish St Leger. In the end, however, Quip was allowed to keep the race, the Jockey Club explaining that a winner of a Flat race, or a National Hunt Flat race, was permitted to run as a 'maiden' in a point-to-point steeple-chase. Those who knew the horse's true ability had scooped the pool.

Curious glances were also flashed towards Gwyn Williams after his nine-year-old gelding Hesperus had won the Maiden race at the Glamorgan Hunt meeting at St Hilary in 1976. A delighted John Beavis had plenty in hand as he eased Hesperus over the line, winning by a comfortable ten lengths to justify a massive gamble from 16-1 to 2-I. Investigations were started immediately, and it was soon discovered that Hesperus had competed in a handicap hurdle under Rules at Hereford a few weeks earlier, finishing ninth of eighteen. Williams was summoned to a top-level Jockey Club inquiry and fined £250. Hesperus was disqualified.

It is clear, therefore, that although point-to-point racing has not seen corruption on the scale suffered by racing itself, it is by no means free of sharp practice.