Here we go again. A horse fails to take part in a race through no fault of its own, yet people who backed it lose their money. And this embarrassing episode happens at Royal Ascot – a meeting that gets more global exposure than any other.
The race was the final contest on Day 2 of the meeting on Wednesday, the one-mile Kensington Palace Stakes, a handicap for fillies and mares. It was won by the 12/1 shot Lola Showgirl, a first Royal Ascot winner for 20-year-old Laura Pearson. But her task was made easier when the fancied third favourite, Stunning Beauty, failed to come out of the stalls with the rest of the field when they opened before jockey Silvestre De Sousa had chance to remove a blindfold from his filly.
You can see the incident clearly at the beginning of the race video below. Stunning Beauty is in stall 3 on the left.
Imagine the reaction of racegoers who had backed Stunning Beauty - and there were quite a few of them. Their selection clearly had no chance of taking part in the race when the starter pressed to open the stalls despite De Sousa shouting for him to wait while he tried to remove the hood. Surely they would be getting their money back.
But no. After a 30-minute-plus delay, the stewards announced that the horse was deemed to have taken part, and all bets on Stunning Beauty were lost.
This was ludicrously unfair, not only on punters, but also on De Sousa, owners Godolphin and trainer Saeed Bin Suroor and his stable staff.
A lose-lose-lose scenario
When the Brazilian, a three-time British champion jockey, finally got the blindfold off and persuaded his mount to move forward, all her rivals were at least 20 strides into the race. It would have been folly to give chase, and De Sousa pulled up the beautifully bred daughter of Shamardal immediately.
This is not the first time punters have lost money on horses that did not take part in a race. These cases create farcical lose-lose-lose days for the sport. Racing fans lose money and feel robbed, the sport loses credibility, and opportunities to attract new faces through the gates are lost.
Happily for some, many bookmakers ignored the stewards’ ruling in this case and opted to refund bets on Stunning Beauty.
Quite how much was being wagered on the 4-year-old is hard to estimate as the grand total is made up of bets placed with any number on bookmakers, in betting shops up and down the UK, on the Tote and on betting exchanges. And then there is the world pari-mutuel pool. People who backed her on that lost around $746,000.
Many will argue it would be unfair on those who backed the winner if Stunning Beauty had been declared a non-runner, as their winning bets would then be subject to a ten percent deduction.
Don’t buy that argument.
The top priority should be making sure everyone willing to risk money on a horserace gets a run for their money.
Those who backed the winner did so knowing Stunning Beauty was in opposition. What happened to Stunning Beauty wiped out any chance of collecting for her backers, while it improved Lola Showgirl’s chances. So why should it cost Stunning Beauty’s backers dearly and not at all affect those who backed the winner?
The stewards’ report reads, “The stewards only have the power to declare a horse a non-runner if it has been prevented from starting due to a faulty action of the stalls, or the horse is riderless at the time the start was effected. As De Sousa was mounted at the time, the start was effected and there was no faulty action of the starting stalls, Stunning Beauty was deemed to have started.”
Whether this report indicates that the stewards cannot or will not be flexible is hard to say. Perhaps they could have found a clause in the book that would support them if they had decided that Stunning Beauty should be treated as a non-runner, which was clearly fair and reasonable.
Was a fruitless search for such a clause the reason it took the stewards over half an hour to come to their decision? After all, if such a case is as straightforward and clear-cut to sort out as their report says, why did it not take 30 seconds to make the call? If, as the report says, they did not have the power to declare the horse a non-runner, one might wonder how long it took the stewards to find that out.
World Pool concern
The incident was variously described as “a disgrace”, “a terrible decision” and other things on social media. And it attracted international attention. Under the headline ‘Punters ripped off as Royal Ascot ruling exposes flaw in World Pool concept’, for instance, the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong commented, “It is the first real challenge for the World Pool concept, which first came into play at Royal Ascot two years ago, and exposes a flaw in the system that needs to be patched up.”
HK Jockey Club chief steward Kim Kelly, who is chair of the International Harmonisation of Racing Rules Committee, told the paper, “I’m a massive fan of the World Pool – it seems to be good for everybody – but for it to reach its potential, there has to be harmonisation on major racing rules such as the protest objection rule and the non-runner rule. We’ve largely got harmonisation on the first one, but we haven’t achieved everything that we’ve wanted with the non-runner rule.”
Kelly, who is adamant punters would have got their money back if the incident happened in Hong Kong, added, “I flagged back in 2018 how important it was going to be for that rule to be harmonised and here we are three years later and it’s come to the fore again. The IFHA have introduced a model rule into the international agreement dealing with non-runners but not everyone has signed up to it.”
Certainly the Ascot stewards appeared to handle the case without a lot of common sense. In their defence, perhaps they didn’t have the option to apply any - because of the rules. Yet, if that is the case, who would be in the best position to point out this blatantly obvious weakness in the rules of racing and do something about it? The stewards themselves perhaps?