Sport is made for betting

The above video won't mean much to anyone unless you're Australian and of my era, but it's a brilliant song and the title, No Secrets, links well to this story. American trainers wouldn't dream of running a horse without Lasix or other permitted medications. Certain trainers named Dutrow will keep moving states until they find one which will allow them to stick whatever they like into a horse. Bad image for the industry, bad for punters that all the problems of horses are being masked, bad for the next guy who comes along and wants to buy the horse only to find out it is held together with sticky tape. In the UK, every punter-friendly suggestion - sectional times, open reporting of treatment of horses etc seems to be rebuffed with the 'too expensive to implement' answer. And as a consequence, punter confidence in the product suffers. Here's what going on in Australia as an example: Racehorse trainers must report surgery TRAINERS will have to repor...

Glad to see the rescheduled meeting going ahead at Newbury tomorrow. Awful scenes last Saturday with the freak electrocution of two horses before the first race. You just can't write procedures in a manual to deal with something as bizarre and unexpected as that. Criticising the officials for running the first race after that is easy in hindsight. One thing that British racing needs to get right though is its professionalism. Jockey Hadden Frost on Tuesday went for home a lap early in a three-mile chase and then ended up with egg on his face when crossing the finish line only meant he had a lap left to go. The jockey made a mistake, fair enough. But to let him off with just a slap on the wrist isn't good enough. This is a professional industry. Punters lost tens of thousands on that horse across the country; they get nothing back for his incompetence. Stewards said the penalty range for this infringement was just 10-14 days, so he got the midpoint of 12 days. Soft as butter. ...