Racing: Te Rapa deal will be further investigated

By MIKE DILLON

Allan Fenwick dropped a bomb yesterday.

The NZ Thoroughbred Racing chief executive declared not over the Te Rapa incident where money reportedly changed hands between two parties to eliminate a protest by a sixth-placed runner against the winner.

Everyone thought it was.

Zahdeal and Lance O'Sullivan won the January 5 race, after which Mark Sweeney, rider of sixth-placed Belgian Blue protested, alleging interference against the winner.

After a conflab between the parties during a brief adjournment, Sweeney withdrew the protest against the Paul O'Sullivan-trained Zahdeal.

The difference in the stakemoney between sixth and fifth was apparently paid by the connections of Zahdeal.

NZTR wants to make certain there is nothing wrong under the rules of racing.

If there is, I say change the rule not the result.

What could be wrong with the Te Rapa result as it stands?

Zahdeal was the $2.25 favourite and was always going to win.

His connections have the winning stake, which they deserve, and punters who would have missed out had the result changed, also went away smiling.

The alternative would have been for the committee to invoke our ridiculous rule to relegate a winner behind the affected horse, in this case to sixth.

We call that fairness.

Australians call it ridiculous. And a lot of other things after Velour was relegated from first to fifth at Counties on November 24 live on Australian television.

NZTR will look at protests on Friday.

Instead of looking to bar private transactions, why not make them official?

Even if our racing bosses got really radical and embraced that thought, some people would scream it could happen only when a jockey or trainer protested.

Not on stipendiary steward protests.

Why?

Take the 1600m maiden race on Auckland Cup day at Ellerslie.

Sumas and Noel Harris won, ending a two-month dry spell for trainer Mark Walker.

Near the line Sumas ducked out, costing favourite Tuscany Reign second place by a narrow margin.

Under our rules, Sumas who, similar to Zahdeal, was never going to be beaten, was relegated to third, 57-1 chance Gemini Lady promoted to first and Tuscany Reign to second.

Examine that.

Under the scenario we call fair, we have demoted a genuine winner at $12 to third and promoted to first a horse who, had they run in lanes, could not have finished better than third.

What sense does that make?

This was a classic case for a deal between connections.

Leave the result as it stood at the winning post and allow the connections of Sumas the option to pay the connections of Tuscany Reign the difference between third and second stakemoney, in this case $1200.

Okay, the purists will say what about Tuscany Reign being denied being part of the quinella?

But if Sumas hadn't ducked out sharply, the quinella result would not have been Gemini Lady-Tuscany Reign as they paid out on, it would have been Sumas-Tuscany Reign, so how much faith can you place in the result as it now stands?

If recompense results were made official they could be controlled by giving the judicial panel the casting vote.

And they should be allowed only when a winner was going to definitely win, regardless of interference.

Jockeys will bleat about this, but riders should be hammered hard by heavy fines and suspensions if found guilty of deliberate interference in the hope of keeping the race in the judicial room through a deal.

Our penalties for jockeys are light compared with Australia.

It will be interesting to see how much action we get from Friday's meeting.

Remember our ridiculous ruling by which, following a dead-heat for third, we used to equally divide the place dividends into four instead of three, disadvantaging the backers of the winner, who had absolutely nothing to do with the dead-heat.

Nobody could not argue the fairness in that but that didn't stop us taking nearly a century to change it.