It's All In The Fine Print

As if the disappointment or even the embarrassment of riding a million dollar colt which started odds-on but failed to fill a place wasn’t enough, the $1,000 penalty handed down to Hugh Bowman for his ride on Lonhroson at Hawkesbury on Thursday must have rubbed salt into his wounds.

Briefly, Bowman thought Lonhroson (racing with blinkers for the first time) had burst through the barrier an instant before the field was released and assumed he had ‘false started’, immediately checking the colt’s forward momentum. As a result, after half a dozen strides, he was in third last place instead of being on the speed as intended (ironically, Lonhroson had been a back-runner at both his previous starts, finishing fourth and sixth), having to make the best of it from there.

In the split second involved, Bowman made a mistake assuming a false start would be declared. He should have continued going forward whilst remaining alert for the normal false start signal which of course was not activated as the starter had no reason to doubt he had made a fair despatch.

In a field of maidens no better than country standard, Lonhroson was given a ground-saving ride thereafter to improve his position and was taken to the outer before the home turn for a clear run but was struggling and failed to finish the race off.

It’s the Stewards’ exacting job to administer the rules which exist for the protection of all, foremost the punters who dived in on this hot-pot.

Bowman was charged under rule AR175(k) which says ‘the Stewards may punish any person who has committed any breach of the Rules or whose conduct or negligence has led or could have led to a breach of the Rules’.

Justifying this, the Stewards cited rule AR135(b) as being the rule which Bowman’s conduct or negligence led or could have led to a breach thereof. That rule states ‘The rider of every horse shall take all reasonable and permissible measures throughout the race to ensure that his horse is given full opportunity to win or to obtain the best possible place in the field’.

In the next sentence of their report, the Stewards say they were not able to make a judgment (in their words ‘comfortably determine’) whether Bowman’s ride had cost Lonhroson a place.

Seems to me they are saying that the colt might well have run as well as it could which is the obligation placed on a jockey to ensure. They offer no opinion whether Lonhroson ‘obtain(ed) the best possible place in the field’ so if that’s the case, how would AR135(b) have held water and if it can’t doesn't AR175(k) fall down too?

I'm not even a bush lawyer but it seems an interesting call, and I wonder if Bowman will appeal.

Bowman’s interpretation of the start was incorrect but was innocently arrived at. We are talking a split-second judgment call which he was not entitled to make but which he nevertheless did.

Though the motivation is different, every meeting we see one jockey or another neck their mounts from a wide barrier and give away ground and momentum at the start so as to conserve the horse’s energy. This is done on the prior assumption that the race is going to pan out a certain way and that the horse cannot initially overcome the perceived disadvantage. They end up in the same place as Lonhroson did. Normally, that passes without comment. An exception was at Randwick on Tuesday when Dan Nikolic, riding Mangala (NZ), was reminded not to set his mounts too stiff a task.

Most days we will see one jockey or another make an injudicious tactical decision which mitigates against his horse’s chance. I’m sure supporters of those horses would love to see some AR135(b)s getting thrown around. But there is premeditation on one hand and there is error of judgment in the midst of battle on the other. Unless the Stewards are implying the former, I reckon Bowman's indiscretion comes under the latter, unpalatable as that may be to those who did their dough.

I have to declare my interest here inasmuch as I am a friend of the owner of Lonhroson and attended the meeting with him. The poor bloke went to the races hoping to have a few questions answered but came away with a whole bunch more. As for Hugh Bowman, I don’t hold a candle for him, having nothing other than a nodding professional acquaintance; strange, you might think, given the years I spent in the centre of the Waterhouse operation (as an apprentice, Hugh won a maiden race on a mare in which I had a racing interest, Regal Touch).

As a pressman in New Zealand for seven years, as a director of the Apprentice Jockey School, as a manager of horses and during my decade in Sydney, I've never become familiar with jockeys outside what was expected and required in the mounting yard. I respect them professionally and call me anti-social if you like, but I have never regarded the cushy relationships which often exist between journos, other functionaries and jockeys as particularly healthy. In 40 years, I can only recall going to the races with jockeys twice; both were here in Sydney and they saved my life – my car had broken down!

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The newcomer which impressed me most this week has been Tobique, a first-start winner at Canterbury on Wednesday.

In a nice field of three-year-olds, this colt stood out like a beacon in the mounting yard and raced accordingly, albeit at big odds. Bred and raced by the White family, he’s by Redoute’s Choice-Mammoth, by Marscay.

The Whites had him in Yarraman Stud’s draft at the 2007 Sydney Easter Sale. I’d seen him at Yarraman beforehand and was very taken with him. He was a 17 November foal and at that stage a bit on the lighter-framed side, just immaturity, but I noted he had “excellent rein and length, very correct, good head and jowl and a loose mover”. I was surprised when he didn’t make what appeared to be a reasonable $200,000 reserve; perhaps there were some issues or perhaps buyers thought the Whites don’t put their nice horses in the sales (after a short period of retaining their homebreds). Whatever, he’s a lovely colt now and surely hasn’t had his last win. Yet another in the long line of quality Redoutes being unleashed this year.