If there’s anyjustice Blueberry Boy appeal should take about ten minutes
It is, at least to my way of thinking, quite astonishing how a group of stewards could arrive at the conclusion that runner-up Mounthenry deserved to be awarded this contest.
Blueberry Boy was demoted when found guilty of causing interference to Mounthenry at the final flight.
The verdict was a neck, after Blueberry Boy, clear of Mounthenry at the time, had hung dramatically across to the stands side on the run in.
He lost many lengths and the stewards had to be sure the interference at the last had cost Mounthenry more than a neck.
To decide that it did meant, again to my way of thinking, that their collective imaginations had run riot and simply defied logic.
There was some fair old rubbish, in the context of Sunday’s highly controversial decision, in Monday’s Racing Post about the quality of the pictures with which the public have to make do.
Basically, Turf Club senior steward, Pierce Molony, and Chairman of the Punchestown acting stewards, Roy Craigie, were making the point that the stewards now watch races on large digital screens, which have bright, clear pictures and show head-on and side-on views on adjoining screens.
The public, in contrast, apparently, have to suffer small screens, often of poor quality, with a dark picture which makes it difficult to tell exactly what is going on.
Isn’t such a convenient whitewash enough to make your bloody blood boil? I’ll tell you what, there was absolutely nothing wrong with either the head-on or side-on pictures produced by At The Races.
I have watched them over and over again in the meantime and become more flabbergasted with each viewing.
The ATR head-on is crystal clear, isn’t of poor quality, isn’t dark and there is no problem seeing precisely what took place.
The facts are simple. There is no doubt Blueberry Boy, with rider Andrew Lynch having his whip in the correct hand, his left, edged across towards Mounthenry heading to the final flight. If he brushed him then it was the lightest touch imaginable.
Andrew McNamara, on Mounthenry, never stopped riding and the horse jumped the flight perfectly well.
At worst it was the most minor of irritants, no more. If Blueberry Boy had run straight from the final flight he would have won by a couple of lengths.
Instead, he tried to give the initiative back to Mounthenry and the second still couldn’t reel him in.
To try to make the case that what happened at the last cost Mounthenry maybe three lengths was about as big a piece of balderdash as you will ever come across.
And if the pictures the stewards looked at, on their digital screens, differed hugely from those on ATR then they can only, surely, have come from outer space!
Moving on, let’s accept for a moment that the stewards were actually right, then why wasn’t Colonel Monroe disqualified after winning the handicap chase later in the day? He clearly moved off a straight line before the final fence, hampering Rockspring Hero, who, in turn, was pushed onto Like A Bee.
The stewards, quite rightly, concluded that Colonel Monroe hadn’t improved his position and allowed the result to stand. Inconsistency, however, at its worst.
The sad part is that there has been tremendous consistency among the stewards nationwide for a long time now.
All the professionals in the game knew exactly where they stood, but this decision certainly came out of the ‘blue.’ In the wake of the affair, the lads on ATR, Gary O’Brien and Matt Chapman, played the proverbial blinder.
“We’re not expecting any change”, said O’Brien, almost nonchalantly, so sure was he, understandably, that the result would stand as he finished an interview with Paul Stafford, the unfortunate trainer of Blueberry Boy.
When the bewildering edict finally filtered through, Chapman exclaimed: “That is one of the most staggering decisions I have ever seen in my life in horse racing. I am lost for words.”
O’Brien and Chapman, one strongly suspects, summed up the thinking of the vast majority watching as events unfolded.
Contrast their performance with the reports in Monday morning’s papers. I think it isn’t unfair to say we really must have the most benign racing press corps in Europe! Anyway, Stafford has decided to appeal the decision of the Punchestown stewards and unless injustice is heaped upon injustice it should take about ten minutes to set the record straight.
