Reputational toll of identity mix-ups makes pre-race scanning a necessary integrity investment

Like every other sector, a lot of black and white figures will fly around Irish racing as a result of this Tuesday’s Government budget.

It leaves little room for intangibles to be factored into bottom-line calculations although that can prove an expensive exercise as shown in Killarney last weekend.

The John Feane-trained Ano Manna started 7-2 favourite for a handicap and won comfortably under jockey Leigh Roche. Except it quickly emerged afterwards that it wasn’t Ano Manna at all but her stable companion Indigo Five who was due to run in a later race.

The mix up was discovered after the winner’s microchip was scanned, as is procedure following all races, by an Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board official. The stewards established the blunder was due to Feane’s representative saddling the wrong one of two similar-looking fillies.

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The ‘winner’ was disqualified with the real Ano Manna deemed to be a non-runner. Feane put it down to human error, explained he was delayed getting to the track, accepted responsibility as is set out under the rules, and got fined €3,000.

However, attempts to put the embarrassing cock-up into any ‘one-of-those-things’ file came up against the uncomfortable reality that it was the second such incident in two years.

In 2021, Jessica Harrington was fined €2,000 after the ‘winner’ of a two-year-old maiden at the Galway festival, Alizarine, turned out to be her three-year-old stable companion Aurora Princess. That too was human error and once again the blunder was uncovered after the event.

Such foul-ups can happen to anyone. Perhaps the most notorious case came in 2020 when the Group One Fillies Mile at Newmarket saw a pair of subsequent classic winners trained by Aidan O’Brien, Snowfall and Mother Earth, saddled incorrectly.

This was at the height of pandemic travel restrictions that meant some Ballydoyle stable staff were unfamiliar with the horses. But ultimately only a sharp-eyed TV viewer spotted the blunder and pointed it out on social media.

That was the most spectacular example of several cases of mistaken identity in Britain which prompted authorities there to take preventive steps.

As is the case here, all horses are scanned when they arrive at the racecourse stableyard. As isn’t the case in Ireland, runners in Britain also have their identities checked before they enter the parade ring to race.

This simple piece of logic is also employed at point-to-points in Ireland, on the not unreasonable basis that it’s better to be safe than sorry afterwards. But for some reason the racing authorities here appear reluctant to take such an obvious step.

Publicly, the IHRB has said it is examining whether similar pre-race scans to what occurs in Britain are necessary in this jurisdiction.

Privately, though, there appears to be concerns within the regulator about such a step, one of them being a feeling that the potential cost of such a move might outweigh any benefits. The price of scanners could come out of petty cash; paying people able to safely use them wouldn’t.

Running a scanner over a single tired horse after a race shouldn’t be beyond most people. The argument goes, however, that doing the same thing to a large field of excitable thoroughbreds before they compete is a different proposition. It isn’t something just anyone can do.

With 395 meetings scheduled for 2024, there are also logistical considerations for employing enough people to do the job at every meeting, including more and more double fixtures, while making provision too for employees who might get sick or simply want to take time off.

And if the job is worth doing then it’s worth paying people properly and fairly to do it.

It’s in such a context there’s a view that resources could be better employed elsewhere in the regulatory battle. Anti-doping is vital to the industry’s credibility and the increasingly effective use of hair testing doesn’t come cheap.

The problem is that such an attitude smacks of knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing. Totting up reputational cost is an imprecise game but avoiding the sort of headlines arising out of Killarney at the weekend, and Galway two years ago, will strike many as a value deal.

Failure to emulate the British step in trying to nip such identity problems in the bud suggests an unfortunately casual attitude towards such a basic step as making every effort to make sure the horse running on the track corresponds to the one on the race card.

Simply dismissing it as bad luck or an unfortunate occurrence that crops up every now and again, or automatically pinning responsibility on the trainer, doesn’t fit with a sport and industry at pains to remind everyone it’s a world leader worth €2.5 billion a year to the country.

Through Government funding in next week’s budget, the IHRB will hope to get more from Horse Racing Ireland than the €11.4 million it got this year to carry out its integrity functions. Considering how much reputational skin everyone in the horse game has in this, these are justifiable hopes.

But failure to do here what has quickly become de rigueur in Britain threatens to charge an even bigger reputational cost in future.

Something for the Weekend

Co Down trainer Natalian Lupini gives her unbeaten classic hope Kitty Rose a Group Three run at the Curragh on Saturday in a race with a proven record of identifying future top-class performers. This will be softest ground Kitty Rose has faced to date whereas BRILLIANT (1.45) has form on cut and as a half-siter to Alcohol Free is bred to relish it.

Jim Crowley opting for AL AASY (2.25) over Israr in Saturday’s Cumberland Lodge at Ascot won’t surprise anyone who watched the horse run on late behind Adelaide River at the Irish Champions Festival last month.