Sport is made for betting

A blow to keeping corruption out of racing, or vindication for a jockey who did nothing more than discuss his rides with blokes who punt, and then made their own independent decisions? Leading Australian jockey Danny Nikolic was charged over several races where his rides were unplaced and the horses in question were laid for substantial amounts by punters he regularly spoke to. Nikolic cleared of serious charges In dismissing the four charges, RADB chairman Judge Russell Lewis said the board was not satisfied that Nikolic had communicated with the associates or some of them about the chances of his mounts resulting in the associates making lay bets outside their normal betting parameters. "The evidence relied upon by the stewards as a basis for drawing an inference that Nikolic communicated the chances of his mounts raises suspicions about what transpired," Judge Lewis said. "But harbouring suspicions about his conduct is not sufficient to prove the charges." One th...

Too many tidbits, not enough time for full-length articles... The mystery in the Betfair/Danny Nikolic/Neville Clements inquiry in Australian racing gets deepers with professional punter Neville Clements being warned off all Australian racecourses indefinitely , no doubt as a refusal to share phone records which will incriminate him. There is plenty more to come in this story. Let's hope if a conviction is warranted, then it is reached, unlike the farcical scenes of the Fallon case in the UK a few years back. It's March, so Italian football is looking dodgy again. On the weekend we had the Chievo-Cagliari boat race which went as planned, but last night a Serie B match was taken off the board by all and sundry but then didn't go as planned. All the money was for a draw between Vicenza and Crotone, but the away team won 2-0, even with 10 men! Did the authorities tell them they were being watched very closely, or was it the case of a few punters trying to spoof the market and ...