October
DecemberBad timing
We have just seen the most ridiculous interpretation of a racing regulation when the stewards suspended Talia Rodder under Rule 135(b).
This rule, very simply but extremely broadly, states that a jockey must take all reasonable and permissable measures to obtain the best possible placing for their mount. How simple is that?
Now Talia, while following instructions from her mount’s trainer, did everything asked of her, except that she could have done it a bit better. She went too fast and gets a six-week suspension!
She is a three-kilo claimer after all and isn’t that why we give inexperienced jockeys a three-kilo claim — because they are inexperienced?
Yet just one day later, in race six at Ballarat, we had the hot favourite and the next best backed horse running last and second last all the way from barrier to post. The "reason" put by both jockeys was that the race was not run to suit their horses. It was too slow.
Now, if the other horses were going too slow, why then did neither of those jockeys do anything about it? It was not a merry-go-round at Luna Park after all. It was an official horse race with tens of thousands of dollars riding on the result.
Those two horses landed last and second last and stayed there. There was another horse in the same race that landed third last, but its jockey (Craig Newitt), after going at a snail’s pace for more than half the race, used his initiative and drove his mount forward and, you guessed it, won the race. That race was run five whole seconds slower than the other 2200-metre race, just two races later.
Now who dictates at what pace the race is run? The horses? No, the jockeys. So in the Ballarat race, from fundamental interpretation of Rule 135(b), Craig Newitt was the only jockey in that race that complied.
But the stewards accepted the excuses of those two jockeys because the race was run too slowly.
Yet Talia Rodder copped a six-week suspension because she rode her mount too fast?
Torquay (Vic)