Chief Stipe

An absolute load of bollocks! Should words like this be in a judicial decision? Are they going to test Drivers for testosterone levels in the future?

Yet another case where the Driver charged admits guilt rather than get hammered by a bigger penalty.

Non Raceday Inquiry – Written Decision dated 6 March 2022 – Tim Williams ID: RIB7846 Respondent(s): Tim Williams - Driver Applicant: Mr V Munro - Stipendiary Steward Adjudicators: Dave Anderson Persons Present: Mr N McIntyre and Mr P Williams - RIB Stewards and Mr T Williams Information Number: A16749 Decision Type: Adjudicative Decision Charge: Race Duelling. Rule(s): 869(3)(g) - Diminishing chances Plea: Admitted Animal Name: SHOW ME HEAVEN Race Number: R7 Hearing Date: 06/03/2022 Hearing Location: Mt Harding Racecourse, Methven. Outcome: Proved Penalty: Driver Tim Williams is suspended for 5 days and fined $350. BACKGROUND: Mr Williams admitted a charge from the Invercargill Harness Racing Club’s meeting on the 25 February 2022 in that as the Driver of SHOW ME HEAVEN in Race 7 he drove in a manner capable of diminishing his horse’s chances of winning by persisting with holding the lead when challenged by MABALENE in the middle stages. The Information was heard at the Hororata Trotting Club’s meeting held at the Mt Harding Racecourse, Methven on 6th March 2022. Mr McIntyre produced an Authority to Charge signed by Mike Clement, Chief Executive of the Racing Integrity Board. The Respondent had endorsed the Information admitting the breach of the Rule and confirmed he understood the charge and he was conversant with the Rule. Rule 869(3)(g) provides: No driver in any race shall drive in any manner capable diminishing the chances of his horse winning. SUMMARY OF FACTS: Below are the relevant facts in respect of the breach. (1) Mr Williams was the driver of SHOW ME HEAVEN in Race 7 at the Invercargill HRC meeting on 25th February 2022. (2) SHOW ME HEAVEN drew 3 for the 1700 mobile start event. (3) Mr Williams has urged his runner forward out of the gate and took the lead shortly after the start point. (4) At the 1400 metre mark MABALENE (B Williamson) comes alongside the leader SHOW ME HEAVEN and is urged to try to take the lead. (5) From this point Mr Williamson has become active in urging MABALENE to try and assume the lead. (6) Mr Williams has sat there until approaching the winning post near the 1000 metre mark where he taps his drive up just as Mr Williamson has his horse forward of Mr Williams’s charge but not far enough for his sulky to move down to the marker line. (7) Mr Williamson has then continued to urge his horse for another 200 metres until he desisted with the challenge which had been for approximately 600 metres. (8) At no stage has Mr Williams attempted to restrain his horse and take a trail during this period when the opportunity existed for a considerable distance. (9) Mr Williams’s horse has battled over the final stages and ended in 7th place 6.7 lengths from the winning horse. (10) The official time shows that the initial 900 metres which was timed in an extremely fast 61.23 seconds. The final 800 metres was 59.76 seconds , with an overall time being 2.00.99, being a mile rate of 1.54.51, a new track record. (11) Mr Williams had options available to him , which was to restrain his horse to take cover in order to give his runner some respite, to finish the race off in the best way possible which he failed to do so. (12) Mr Williams’s drive on this occasion is well below the standard expected of a driver with his experience. EVIDENCE: Mr McIntyre and Mr Williams were both satisfied with the Summary of Facts prepared by the Applicant. Mr McIntyre stated the Stewards had nothing to add in the way of evidence and they were not requiring to show any replays of the race. Mr McIntyre stated Mr Williamson’s case was heard on Friday and as a result he received an 8 day suspension. Mr Williams was delighted he didn’t have to sit through any replays of the race again. He stated his plan for the race was to lead because his horse had won all its races in front. He said he indicated to Mr Williamson early on he was going to hold the front and as Mr Williamson was challenging he saw that the favourite was on Mr Williamson’s back. He said he thought if he eased and let the front go Mr Williamson would have let the favourite go which would have him placed 3 back which he considered was not giving his horse the best opportunity. He said MABALENE had raced poorly in its 2 previous starts and appeared to be flat compared to his horse which was travelling kindly. The Adjudicative Committee asked Mr McIntyre, was the culpability of the incident shared equally between Mr Williamson and Mr Williams. He said both Drivers have to make decisions as circumstances are presented during the race whether you are outside the leader or on the rail and in this case the Stewards’ opinion was that both Drivers were equally culpable. DECISION: The charge is admitted and therefore proved. SUBMISSIONS FOR PENALTY: Mr McIntyre outlined Mr Williams’ driving record which showed he is one of the country’s leading and experienced Drivers. He said the Penalty Guidelines have a starting point for a breach of this Rule of a 40 drive suspension or a $2000 fine. He said a suspension of 6 days is recommended and the Stewards realise this would differ from Mr Williamson’s penalty as it was based on Mr Williamson driving an average of approximately 4 times a meeting as against Mr Williams averaging approximately 6 drives per meeting. Mr Williams stated in 15 years as a license holder he has a clear record under the Rule. He said he wasn’t looking for any deferment in respect of suspension and that a fine or a combination of both would be preferable. REASONS FOR PENALTY: The Adjudicative Committee in its assessment of the race, found that up until the two horses reached the winning post with a lap to run, the challenge from Mr Williamson and the rejection of it by Mr Williams was within the Rules. From this point on either ego or testosterone or perhaps just bloody mindedness reared it’s head. Race tracks are a very competitive place and theses incidents happen from time to time but they have a detrimental effect on Harness Racing. Mr Williams’ drive impacted the Owners, Trainers and more importantly the betting public and is deserving of a significant sanction. The Penalty Guidelines provide a 40 drive suspension or a $2000 fine as a starting point for a breach of the Rule. Mr Williams has a clear record under the Rule, admitted the breach and has freely accepted, with genuine remorse, that he was guilty of poor judgment. In assessing a concession for these factors it is helpful this Adjudicative Committee has the Williamson decision to reference. The Adjudicative Committee in that case applied a starting point of a 10 day suspension based on Mr Williamson’s average drives per meeting and allowed a 2 day discount for the very similar factors in this case. The Adjudicative Committee has arrived at a starting point of a 7 day suspension in Mr Williams’ circumstances based on his average drives per meeting. It finds a discount of 2 days, for the mitigating factors, to be too lenient on Mr Williams and at the same time considers a 1 day discount to be too harsh. Although this Adjudicative Committee is mindful the two cases have to be judged separately it is common sense to appreciate they are entwined and any sanction must conclude in close proximity with the other. CONCLUSION: The Respondent is suspended for a period of 5 days commencing 9 March 2022 and concluding 16 March 2022. In addition to this suspension the Respondent is fined $350.

Purely self enforced exile. Not sure what he objected to exactly.

Then just roll over and take it until it hurts or there is no one left.

Start speaking up @Freda - lobby your local programming committee!! Shame you are flying the white flag with regard to the Guineas moving. I guess fields of broken hacks and poorly bred plodders will be attractive to some punters.

What's your point? Surely the key calculation is their return vs the industry average. Is it really an unhealthy fascination? Isn't it more unhealthy to turn a blind eye in public yet continue to pitch up on poor training and racing tracks, not say anything and expect things to change. However I note some are quick to speak out when it directly affects their own self interest. Yeah do away with Cup Week completely afterall it is just a party for all the once a year tossers and they don't serve the beer you like anyway. Yep a really progressive move. Won't fix the track though will it? Isn't that a reflection of the state South Island racing and the focus of South Island Trainers? Every trainer not matter their domicile has the same opportunity to target iconic age group races. Agreed - but who are the people on the programming committees? Surely they could help bring about positive change. Although it must be getting harder to programme with the diminishing number of good racing surfaces in the South Island.

Your bias and snarkiness causes you to miss the point. There were patterns for 2 and 3 year olds in BOTH islands leading to the elite races. Now the South Island has a mess and the Guineas are dominated by the North. You knock Te Akau yet they didn't join your so called Mafia from the North clamouring to get the Guineas moved north. However if Riccarton don't sort their race and traiming track issues out I wouldn't count on their support much longer. BTW quite an achievement to get the First 4 in a Group 1 yesterday was it not?

I wouldn't be surprised to hear that she hurt herself in the first 400m.

Yes that's correct. I got mixed up with Lionel Pratt who trained there and was associated with the early education of Bob and Bill Skelton.

Colette has solid Heavy form 3 from 4 and $7.5m in the bank.

Yep but the only certainty of the day.

Wouldn't touch the Slipper - 2yr olds on a heavy track.

Your sort of track today - a lottery!

Yes it was won by Powley. One of my favourite horses of the early 80's. She won it in 1980 and two starts later beating Glamour Bay by a head in the 1000 Guineas. Orari was a fairly decent track and looking back there were good lead up races in both islands at "lesser" tracks to the bigger Group events in the late Spring/early Summer.

It was the Geraldine Challenge Stakes - a Stakes race for 3yr old's run early in the new season. Canterbury Belle won it by five lengths in 1984. The race figures in many a fine pedigree. The Grand Dam of So You Think ran second in it. Lomondy another. Seascay's dam ran 3rd in it. Essentially it attracted the same class of horses that raced in the Canterbury Belle Stakes in that era. It was run at Orari racecourse - the home of the mighty Grey Way. The Harness code had a Group 3 race called the Orari Challenge Stakes for 3yr old's - it also attracted eventual top line 3yr olds.

I just measured it on Google Earth and it is over 400m. Geez when did they last race at Opaki!!!!! I remember standing on the concrete pad remains of the Grandstand, in the early dawn breathing clouds of steam watching my horse work nearly 20 years ago!

It's at least 400m.

I thought Motukarara has the longest?

Hijacking your own Topics again @Brodie!! Please keep on point!

So if you had been told that she was being ridden forward would that have changed your decision to not punt on her? Your rating of her in that field wouldn't have changed would it? Was she at value per your assessment of her ability?

Perhaps there is a Canterbury Mafia?

Sorry I missed some of this thread conversation!!!! The other thing about Canterbury Belle was her name represents the Wigley's and Inglewood Stud. KEN AUSTIN - THE BEGINNING An historic stud with an exciting new future Inglewood Stud is the oldest thoroughbred stud still standing a stallion in New Zealand. Still operating from its original Ohoka property, Inglewood Stud was founded in 1938 by breeder, auctioneer and administrator Ken Austin. Austin’s great-grandson Gus Wigley is the current manager of the stud, taking over the running of the farm from his father Nick in 2012, some 75 years after Austin first set foot on Inglewood Stud. Ken Austin was one of the key figures in the history of New Zealand thoroughbred breeding. His achievements in the industry include co-founding the New Zealand Thoroughbred Breeders’ Association, breeding and racing numerous Group One winners, and standing the successful sires Sun King, Battle Song, Lucky Bag and the first really successful colonial bred stallion, Defaulter. Austin immigrated to New Zealand from Australia in 1932 after travelling annually to New Zealand for the previous six years to conduct the Trentham Yearling Sales as auctioneer. He played a key role in setting up the first New Zealand national yearling sales and was involved in both the recommending and selling of the two great horses of the time, Gloaming and Phar Lap. The Wigley family still holds Austin’s original Trentham Yearlings Sales catalogue containing the pedigree page of Phar Lap, with Austin’s handwritten notes a prominent feature. Austin moved to New Zealand in 1932 to manage the Elderslie Stud at Oamaru for the Reid family, who stood Phar Lap’s sire Night Raid. It was six years later that Austin leased the Inglewood Stud property in North Canterbury, the farm’s historic homestead built in 1864. From the stud Austin established himself as one of the country’s most successful breeders, leading the breeders’ list in the1949/50 season with 18 individual winners and again in 1950/51 with 17 individual winners. In 1954/55 Inglewood Stud was the leading prize money earner with 14 winners of 38 races earning 42,000 pounds. Austin’s breeding feats were matched by his ownership achievements, usually with unwanted stock unsold at the yearling sales. His most famous racehorse was Monte Carlo, a gelding he bred from a daughter of Raphis, an unraced sister to Phar Lap. Monte Carlo was offered at the 1955 yearling sales where he failed to reach his reserve of 2000gns. Following a failed private sale as a yearling, Monte Carlo was broken in by Austin before being sent to Sydney trainer Frank Dalton, an old associate of Austin’s from his Australian days. After a nine length win at his fourth juvenile start at Rosehill, Monte Carlo was set for the AJC Derby. Two weeks prior to the Derby, Austin accepted an offer of 6000gns from the USA but the sale fell through because of custom difficulties. The colt went on to win the AJC Derby, VRC Derby and the AJC St Leger before a further US sale fell through due to problems with air transport. Monte Carlo went on to win two City Tatts Gold Cups, the VRC Queens Plate and the STC Cup as a four-year-old before winning the Metropolitan and the Mackinnon Stakes prior to his second in the Melbourne Cup as a five-year-old. Austin finally got his sale in 1957, Monte Carlo sold to the USA for 30,000gns where he broke the track record when winning the Sussex Turf Cup at Delaware Park. While Monte Carlo was Austin’s greatest claim to fame as an owner, his Group One winners certainly didn’t end there. With Frank Dalton as his conditioner, Austin raced Slogan to two Doncaster Handicap wins and Count Cyrano to a win in the Metropolitan Hcp. In 1956 Slogan won the Doncaster Handicap on the same day that Monte Carlo won his AJC St Leger. Austin was also instrumental in forming the New Zealand Thoroughbred Breeders’ Association, being the first President from 1946 to 1951, Vice President in 1951 and life member until his death in 1959. He was a leading contributor and writer for the NZTBA’s annual publication, The NZ Thoroughbred, and a writer for many thoroughbred publications throughout the world. THE WIGLEYS The family connection continues Ken Austin’s early death in the late 1950s saw the stud and its bloodstock sold outside of the family with Austin’s entire bloodstock portfolio sold on the Inglewood Stud front lawn in a final dispersal sale. It was not until 1971 that the stud fell back into family hands, Austin’s grandson Nick Wigley – son of Austin’s daughter Barbara (Bing) – returning from his OE in England to purchase the stud with his wife Carol. Much of the stud’s bloodstock, including its stallion Tiber, were included in the sale, but it was not until the Wigleys imported the Nashua stallion Beaufort Sea in 1974 that things clicked up a notch for Inglewood Stud. Beaufort Sea’s very first runner claimed the first two-year-old race of the season, and the stallion never looked back. In a stud career spanning 20 years, Beaufort Sea left over 300 winners whose earnings exceeded NZ$6,429,746. He finished third on both the 1981/82 and 1984/85 New Zealand general sires’ premiership with over 17 stakes winners to his name throughout his career THE FILLY One of the greats of South Island racing While Nick’s parents, Sandy and Bing, raced the grand Beaufort Sea mare Seamist to 10 stakes wins, including the Gr. 1 ARC New Zealand Stakes, Beaufort Sea reserved his best for the couple that put the feed in his bin, siring for Nick and Carol the glamour filly of the 1984/85 season, Canterbury Belle. Canterbury Belle was born and raced in an era when the ‘one-eyed Cantabrian’ was at his most parochial, and with the filly’s appropriate name, black and red silks, and undeniable ability, she captured the hearts of Canterbury’s staunch racing public. An imposing chestnut with the size and strength of a colt, Canterbury Belle won her first three starts in the South Island as a three-year-old by a combined 12 lengths. She started favourite in the NZ 1000 Guineas with the weight of the Canterbury public behind her, the filly’s victory in the Classic as emphatic as her previous three starts. Unbeaten, she tripped north to the Bayer Classic only for a starting gate injury to dismiss any chance of a fifth straight win. The injury took the filly off the scene for four months, but she was soon back showing her dominant power, winning her first two starts back to take her record to six wins from seven starts. Trainer Dave Kerr had the Queensland Oaks in his sights for the filly, but none guessed at the heights the filly would reach at that 1985 Queensland Winter Carnival. Her first two starts in Brisbane in the Queensland Guineas and Doomben Roses both resulted in second placings, and while the filly looked a certain chance over the mile and a half of the Queensland Oaks, critics raised their eyebrows at Kerr’s seemingly bizarre decision to instead take on Australia’s best sprinters in Queensland’s marquee sprint, the Gr. 1 Stradbroke Handicap. Just one three-year-old filly had won the race in the 82 year history of the event and most thought the Kiwis had bitten off more than they could chew with their star filly. But it was the Wigleys and Kerr that knew the filly best and it was to be the daring Cantabrians that had the last laugh, Canterbury Belle exhibiting her rare ability with her trademark powerful finish to re-write the history books and claim the Stradbroke Handicap with a dominant display. Canterbury Belle’s 10 wins in 21 career starts will forever have her cemented as one of Canterbury’s great racehorses, but it will be the way the province rallied behind the mare that will be the defining memory of her outstanding career. THE NEW INGLEWOOD STUD Gus and Bianca take over the helm The new millennium saw Inglewood Stud consolidate, the Wigleys moving away from stallions to concentrate on their select broodmare band – many descending from both Seamist and Canterbury Belle – with Nick turning his hand to training with a small team of homebreds in work. A 13 acre block of the stud including the Inglewood homestead and stables was sold off in 2002, with a new house and stable complex built at the back of the farm. From the stud’s broodmare band the Wigley’s continued to sell yearlings at the Karaka Sales, while Nick’s patient and dedicated English style of training came into play. In 2012, Nick and Carol's son Gus, and his wife Bianca, shifted down to the stud from Auckland with the intention of ramping the stud back up to its stallion standing days. That they have done on the back of their sensational young stallion Zacinto, with new comer War Decree now added to the stallion ranks. In the short time they have been running the stud, Gus and Bianca have produced the stakes winners Ugo Foscolo, Fifty Fifty, Secret Allure, Replique and Zigwig, from just 40 odds runners. The training arm of Inglewood Stud offers another dimension to the opportunity afforded to Zacinto and War Decree. The future of Inglewood Stud looks bright under the next generation of this historic New Zealand racing family.

All good....perhaps focus more on the decisions and the errors than abusing the individuals. Changes will happen with the Judiciary one way or another very soon.

Full moon last night Forbs?