KEY POINTS:
Here's a challenge.
New Zealand Thoroughbred Racing, change the interference/relegation rule quickly.
Perhaps it can't be changed overnight, but is that a reason it cannot be done within weeks?
To explain, in Australia if a horse wins a race, to successfully protest against that horse for interference, you have to prove you would have beaten the winner.
In New Zealand if a winner causes interference to the third-placed runner, which is proven to have cost that horse second place, you can be relegated from first to third.
That's what happened on Saturday at Te Rapa when Possum and Easy On The Eye lost consecutive races, both for rider Jason Waddell.
There are two issues here under our ridiculous rule - which no one wants. Easy On The Eye had to go, but Possum looked to be a dreadful decision.
But let's leave even that aside for the moment.
Of much wider and greater importance, under the Australian rule neither horse would be in danger of losing the race.
Everyone it seems wants the ruling changed to run parallel with Australia. At a time when we are increasingly selling our race vision to Australia to bet on, and making a lot of dollars doing it, it is crucial punters there can bet with confidence that they are gambling under the same set of rules they're used to.
Our chief stipendiary steward Cameron George, an Australian, thinks the current rule is wrong.
Late in the day at Te Rapa on Saturday, the immediate past chairman of the Judicial Control Authority, John Grant, said in discussion: "This rule has to go, it is no longer applicable or workable under the modern day racing scheme."
That's from someone who once had to strongly defend the rules.
In Australia the winner is protected at all costs.
Here we bend over backwards to apply common law and the rules of natural justice to races.
Neither have a place.
Racing is unique and needs its own set of rules and regulations as far away as possible from natural justice.
In our quest for natural justice we almost always lose sight of racing justice.
One of the biggest mistakes New Zealand racing made decades ago was being mesmerised by lawyers.
It's why our Rules Of Racing is 10 times the size of the equivalent volume of any of the Australian states and why the current administration at NZTR is looking to have ours rewritten.
Our relegation rule was once deemed to be a model for fairness.
On Saturday, Possum and Easy On The Eye were deemed to have cost the third-placed runners $3500 in the difference between second and third prizemoney.
Yet they themselves had to drop $18,375 for their owners when both were clearly the best horses in each race on the day.
Is that fair?
It's the difference between natural justice and racing justice.
The Aussies have got it right - let the best horse in the race win and if there is any objection the jockey pays the penalty.
After all, the jockey, being out on the track, is the only one who can influence a case of interference.
Under our current rule it's easy for a jockey to have a mindset of "I'll flatten this other horse to win and take my chance in the judicial room".
A three-to-five-raceday suspension might apply if found guilty, whereas in Australia the same rider might get 10 racedays' suspension for a cynical case of interference.
A 10-day suspension will make a jockey think much harder about causing interference.
It's self-regulatory.
Returning to the Possum decision.
Someone needs to show this writer where the rider of the third-placed runner Brave Runningbear stopped riding to say without any doubt the horse was cost second place.
After 12 views of the head-on slow motion replay it isn't obvious.
Early in the home straight when the only movement had been Brave Runningbear moving out and shifting Possum off its line, Collett rode Brave Runningbear with the whip.
At least 100m before there was any further movement by any horse, Collett sat down and rode her mount with hands and heels and continued to do so for every stride to the post.
Where is the evidence that Possum cost Brave Runningbear second?
Where was the interference?
We can't financially afford to have the Aussies losing faith with our racing.
C'mon guys, get the rule changed and avoid all this nonsense.
