is horse racing bent in any way?

​Recently someone responded to a comment I posted in relation to a horse race I had watched on YouTube with a diatribe on my inability to see through the veil of corruption that he believes is at the very heart of the sport. I should say at this point that this correspondent is not conversant with any of the following principals of written English – capital letters, punctuation, full-stops and spelling. So I was not dealing with someone with any sort of education above junior school standard, not that being a prime example of the decline in schooling in this country absolved him from the calumny he inflicted upon the dedicated people who work honestly and diligently in our sport.
As is my want, I replied to the man hoping to disabuse him of his harsh criticism of a sport I have tendency to defend as if it is my mother being debased. I answered his initial examples of ‘bent jockeys’ etc by making the point that poor stewarding and poor riding judgment should not be used as evidence to taint the sport. The race won by a 100/1 shot at Hamilton quite recently was, apparently, the ‘straw that broke the camel’s back’ for many people, even though even a cursory inspection of either the race or the form-book would prove the only wrong-doing being, perhaps, the trainer running the horse consistently over the wrong trip previous to the Hamilton race.
Sadly, far from appeasing my correspondent, his next communication was heavily laden with the threat that along with his friends – apparently a race at Catterick had now loaded the gun of retribution – they were going ‘to do something about the problem’. What, exactly, they were intending to do, was left hanging in the air, though I suspect when he had sobered up his first thought would be to return to his local betting shop, no doubt via the supermarket to pick up a few cans, to lose more of his hard-earned dosh.
Although I continue to believe horse racing in this country is in the majority straight as a die, the perception is not one the sport should ignore. As I noted to my unfriendly correspondent, historically horse racing did have a problem with horses being pulled time and time again in order to bring off a major gamble somewhere down the line. You only have to read the autobiographies of jockeys who rode in the 1920, 30’s, 40’s and 50’s to be confronted with stories of horses stopped on the orders of the trainer, owner or local gangster. Paul Mathieu’s excellent book ‘The Druid’s Lodge Confederacy’ is about little else but gambles landed after long-planned strategies. There is a many a book collating and praising the ways and means horses have been used and abused down the decades to land small and large fortunes for their connections.
But does that mean these sort of shenanigans still exist today? One cannot argue that young horses are not given educational runs on occasions, which in the long run is to the benefit of the horse and the punter, with the clever punter looking at maiden 2-Year-Old races and novice hurdles to pick out tenderly-handled horses that look future winners. But since the implementation of tracking cameras, television cameras, indeed cameras here, there and everywhere, on the racecourse, allowing stewards instant access to race footage, I would suggest that the ‘pulling’ of horses is far, far less of a problem in British racing than jockeys allowing their mounts to drift off a true line in order to impede an opposing horse.
And, as I wrote in reply to my unfriendly correspondent, poor stewarding, which is on the increase in my opinion – the Eclipse and Lancashire Oaks come easily to mind – and poor riding judgment, should not be put forward as evidence of race-rigging. I am not saying that categorically it does not happen on British racecourses but if you are of the opinion that horses are regularly pulled then it becomes easier and easier to convince yourself that the game is rigged. I have no doubt that in betting shops the length and breadth of Great Britain last Friday there were disgruntled punters pointing at the screen and claiming that Frankie ‘pulled’ Inspiral so that he could win big (in some undefined way) on the winner.
I was stood in a betting shop a few years ago and overheard two blokes confirm to everyone around them that A.P.McCoy is ‘bent as a U-bend’, with someone else chiming in ‘And that Ruby Walsh’. If ever there were two jockeys who wanted to win every time they were legged-up on a horse it was A.P. McCoy and Ruby Walsh. But that is the sort of absurd observations the sport and its devotes must fight against.