The Racing Post had run with the story on its front page in spite of there being no official confirmation from the BHA. The report was full of ifs, maybes and allegedlys to avoid the paper being sued if the story was incorrect.
The main thrust of the report was that, whether the story was true or not, the lack of response by the BHA was yet another example of the manifest inability of the authority to effectively govern horseracing.
I visited the websites of the national daily newspapers. All of them reported on the story and all were negative and highly critical of the BHA, several with leading articles bemoaning the lack of response from racing’s regulator.
So much for our control of the PR.
Piers Pottinger had been right—saying nothing had been a disaster.
There were printed quotes calling for the Jockey Club to take back the mantle of authority, some of them from very influential members of the racing community including the trainers Duncan Johnson and Graham Perry.
That was rich, I thought. Graham Perry was lucky still to have his license after what I’d found at his Cheshire stable. The old Jockey Club would have whisked it away faster than you could say methylphenidate.
Crispin called me at ten minutes to ten from the BHA offices.
“Roger Vincent has resigned.”
I wasn’t particularly surprised.
“Who’s taken over as chairman?” I asked.
“Ian Tulloch, but he claims it’s a temporary measure.”
Crispin sounded as if he didn’t believe it and nor did I. It was common knowledge that Ian Tulloch had been angling to be the next chairman ever since he’d arrived on the Board and now, it appeared, he had seized his chance.
“It might turn out to be a poisoned chalice,” I said. “I reckon there will be more resignations before this lot blows over. What has Howard said?”
“Nothing, at the moment. But what’s new? He shut himself away in his office as soon as he arrived this morning and, since then, he has refused to speak to anyone, either directly or on the telephone. I’m actually quite worried about him.”
“I hope he hasn’t got his service revolver with him,” I said with a smile. “And jumping out the window of his first-floor office wouldn’t kill him.”
Crispin tried to laugh at my poor-taste joke, but it was really not a laughing matter. Roger Vincent had taken one honorable way out. No one would want Howard Lever to take an alternative route.
“Do you know of anyone else who’s thinking of resigning?” I asked.
“Apparently, Neil Wallinger has been mumbling about it.”
“He’s probably the one who should be made chairman—that is, if they want to regain any public confidence. He’s the only one of the current Board with a proven track record as a sports administrator, not that I think he’s been much good at it. He’s become rather dithering as he’s got older.”
“You are so right, dear boy,” Crispin said.
“I reckon the whole Board might have to go. Especially if the press discover they authorized a payment of a hundred thousand pounds from BHA funds for nothing in return.”
“There’s a real sense of panic here,” Crispin said. “There are rumors flying round like confetti. Everyone is suddenly worried they may lose their jobs if the authority is closed down.”
“Surely that couldn’t happen.”
“You say that, but no one thought the GLC could be abolished.”
“The GLC?” I asked.
“Greater London Council. Closed almost overnight in the mid-eighties by Maggie Thatcher, who claimed it was an unnecessary tier of government and a huge waste of public money. People said she couldn’t do it, but she did.”
“Before my time,” I said.
“You young whippersnapper.”
“Yes, all right, Granddad.”
I wasn’t sure how old Crispin actually was, somewhere in his early sixties maybe. It was one of those bits of information that he would divulge only on a need-to-know basis and I didn’t need to know.
“But who would control racing?” I said.
“Well, all the administration would continue as now. No one is suggesting that Weatherbys should go.”
Weatherbys was the private firm that had been responsible since 1770 for both the administration of British horseracing and the keeping of the Thoroughbred Breeding Registry, more commonly known as the “General Stud Book.”
“It is just the regulation and disciplinary functions that would change. There seems to be a growing campaign in the press to reinstate the Jockey Club in that role.”
“But that’s ridiculous,” I said.
The Jockey Club had lost its position as the sport’s regulatory authority back in 2006 owing to criticism of its self-electing policy and also because of a general desire to increase the transparency and independence of racing’s governance.
“Is it?” said Crispin. “The system had worked pretty well for over two hundred and fifty years and now some people are asking why it was changed.”
“But you know why it was changed. Racing was seen as being run by the toffs. It was a throwback to a gentlemen’s club of the eighteenth century.”
“Maybe,” he said. “But at least the toffs had some gravitas. Racing is steeped in their aristocratic blue blood and they always had the sport’s best interests at heart, even above their own.”
“Are you saying the BHA doesn’t have racing’s best interests at heart?”
“No, of course not. But the BHA is more of a commercial enterprise and it recruits from outside the racing family.”
“But surely that’s a good thing,” I said.
“Not in everyone’s eyes. You probably don’t remember the uproar when Howard Lever was appointed chief executive. His father had been a coal miner and he was seen as a complete outsider. He was accused by some of being nothing more than an insurance salesman who didn’t know one end of a horse from the other.”
Crispin was being somewhat unkind. Howard Lever had risen rapidly from his humble start to become the chief operating officer of a highly successful shipping insurance company in the City of London. And prior to his appointment with the BHA, he’d owned shares in a couple of racehorses, albeit within commercial syndicates.
“Are you telling me,” I said, “that you agree with the press?”
“I don’t know,” he said, “but I feel we shouldn’t dismiss the notion out of hand.”
In other words, he did agree with the press.
“So how does the BHA regain the confidence of the racing public?” I asked. But I already knew the answer.
We had to catch Leonardo. And quickly.
—
I SPENT much of Thursday afternoon watching the racing from Fontwell Park on television as well as going over in my head everything that I knew about our friend Leonardo.
There was precious little.
I’d said at one of the Board meetings that I thought he was a racing insider, someone who knew his way around a racetrack. That was because he had been able to deliver a poisoned ginger cake to the jockeys’ changing room at Ascot without being intercepted or questioned. He must, therefore, have had a right to be there or at least a reasonable excuse.
Ritalin and Dexedrine.
Only Matthew Unwin’s horses tested positive for Dexedrine. All the others had Ritalin’s methylphenidate in their systems.
Methylphenidate hydrochloride and dextroamphetamine sulfate.
I looked them both up once more on the Internet just in case I’d missed something the first time.
Both drugs were used as treatment for narcolepsy, a sleep disorder, and also for ADHD, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, especially in children.
That was it! That’s what had caused the quiver in the room.
My comment about Leonardo possibly b
eing a person with hyperactivity in their family had struck a chord with someone in that meeting.
I was sure that’s why I’d felt uncomfortable.
I went back to the list I’d made of the eleven people who had been present at that meeting.
Could one of the eleven have anything to do with doping the horses? Or did one of them know the person who had? And did that person have hyperactivity in their family?
One of the eleven was me and I knew for certain that I hadn’t been involved, so that left ten. And Crispin Larson could hardly have both thrown the money off the train and have been standing beside the track to collect it unless, of course, he’d had an accomplice.
But what about the other nine?
I stared at the list of familiar names.
There was Roger Vincent, the six remaining nonexecutive directors, plus Howard Lever and Stephen Kohli.
How many of them had been at Aintree for the Grand National and hence able to set off the fireworks remotely?
All of them, I expect.
As the controlling elite of British racing, why wouldn’t they be present at one of the greatest days in the horseracing calendar? They had probably all been invited to have lunch with the chairman of the racetrack.
I’d actually seen Roger Vincent, Piers Pottinger, Howard Lever and Stephen Kohli with my own eyes as they had stood with the policemen at the water jump after the incident, and I’d also seen Bill Ripley, Ian Tulloch and Neil Wallinger in the parade ring prior to the big race. I imagine that the other two directors, George Searle and Charles Payne, would have been there as well, enjoying the hospitality that would have readily been on offer to BHA Board members.
Perhaps I would get Crispin to ask the racetrack chairman to send the guest list for his Grand National Day lunch.
I watched on the television as Duncan Johnson’s runner won the three-mile chase at Fontwell, the horse storming up the hill to triumph by three lengths at a price of five-to-one. The cameras then showed the smiling trainer as he greeted his winner in the unsaddling enclosure.
Racehorse trainers were definitely racing insiders and they certainly knew their way around the weighing room and the changing rooms, especially if, like Duncan Johnson, they had once been jockeys themselves.
“There has just been an unusual announcement from the stewards’ room,” said the TV announcer, looking straight into the camera. “The remainder of today’s racing here at Fontwell has been abandoned due to a serious bout of food poisoning among the officiating stewards, two of whom have been taken to the hospital by ambulance.”
I stared at the screen for a few seconds in disbelief, then called Crispin.
“I’ve just heard from the Clerk of the Course at Fontwell,” he said.
“It has to be Leonardo again,” I said. “How the hell can we be so short of stewards that the racing has to be abandoned because a couple are taken ill? Surely they could have recruited temporary stewards from the great and the good among the Fontwell crowd.”
“It seems that the most seriously ill are the two stipes,” said Crispin.
Stipes—or stipendiary stewards, as they are officially known—are full-time employees of the BHA who, along with approved and trained amateur stewards appointed by each racetrack, are responsible for policing the Rules of Racing at all the thirteen hundred–plus race meetings that take place each year in Great Britain.
Without either of the assigned stipendiary stewards being fit to act, or even present at the racetrack, the remaining amateur stewards had little choice but to abandon the meeting.
“Who do we have there?” I asked.
“Investigators?”
“Anyone. Get someone to find out what the stewards had for lunch and tell them to collect some samples of the food.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“And one more thing,” I said. “Who were the trainers who complained to you that someone was trying to extort money from them?”
There was a lengthy pause down the line.
“Other than Matthew Unwin?”
“Yes,” I said with some impatience, “other than Matthew Unwin.”
There was another long pause as Crispin’s brain worked out whether I needed to know. In the end, it decided that I did.
“Richard Young and Duncan Johnson.”
“When did they talk to you?”
“Richard approached me in January and Duncan at the beginning of March, a couple of weeks before the Cheltenham Festival.”
“What did they say, exactly?” I asked.
“They told me they’d received anonymous letters stating that unless they paid an insurance premium, their horses might end up testing positive for banned stimulants.”
“The same for each?”
“Pretty much. I can’t remember the exact words. Duncan was telling me unofficially, but he still wanted it on record just in case any of his horses subsequently proved positive. He was covering his back. Both of them claim they didn’t respond to the letter. Do you think the same man is responsible?”
“It would be rather a coincidence if he’s not,” I said. “But I wonder why he switched his attention from individual trainers to the BHA as a whole.”
“Maybe he was getting no joy from any of the trainers,” Crispin said. “Or perhaps he was trying out his doping technique before he did it wholesale at Cheltenham. I just wish we knew what he’d do next.”
“How about running live wires under the grass to kill the horses? If I didn’t know better, I’d say that Leonardo did that too.”
Two horses had been electrocuted in the parade ring before the first race at Newbury in 2011. The stewards had abandoned racing that day as well.
“I hate to think what the press will say about this latest incident,” Crispin said. “Talk about fanning the flames as the BHA burns.”
28
If things had been bad for the BHA in the newspapers on Thursday morning, by Friday they were even more disastrous than even Crispin had imagined.
Not only was there extensive criticism of the previous afternoon’s abandonment of racing at Fontwell Park but the London Telegraph proclaimed a “World Exclusive!” with a banner headline stating that ALL CHELTENHAM WINNERS WERE DOPED, a theme that was soon picked up by all the other newspaper websites and also by the television news channels.
Ian Tulloch was shown on the BBC making a statement on the sidewalk outside the BHA offices in High Holborn.
Without exactly confirming the reports, he stated that the British Horseracing Authority was investigating the possibility that the drinking-water supply to the Cheltenham racetrack stables had somehow become contaminated. Against a tirade of hostile questions from the assembled journalists, he asserted robustly that the BHA remained in full control of the sport and there was nothing for racing’s stakeholders to concern themselves about.
Business as usual, was the official message.
He reminded me somewhat of the Titanic stewards who initially told worried passengers, who had been awakened by the impact with the iceberg, that everything was fine and they should go back to bed, quoting the flawed acceptance that the ship was “unsinkable.”
Was the BHA about to plunge headlong into the abyss?
The Racing Post clearly thought so, with a drawing of a grave with BHA RIP chiseled in the headstone adorning the full title page of its online edition.
The attached article called for a return to proper stability within the sport, something that it claimed the Jockey Club had provided for over a quarter of a millennium. It didn’t outright call for the Jockey Club to be reinstated as horseracing’s regulator, but it left the reader in little doubt that that was exactly what they wanted.
And there were more quotes from leading figures in the sport lending support to the notion.
I thought it was strange how people�
��s attitudes could reverse so quickly. Some of those who only a few years ago had argued passionately for a change to a more transparent and democratic system of governance were now being equally vociferous in their encouragement for a return to how things had been before.
At ten o’clock, I called Crispin Larson.
“You’re well out of it here,” he said. “Half the staff are suicidal and the other half are just bloody furious. I’ve had Paul Maldini in here, demanding to know if I was aware that all the Cheltenham winners had been doped. What could I say?”
“So now everyone knows it’s true?”
“I suppose so. Paul also now knows that you weren’t really sacked and that you’ve continued to work for us undercover. He’s bloody furious about that as well. Says he should have been told.”
Perhaps he should have been.
“How did he find out?”
“Howard Lever told him when he accused the Board of sitting on their fat arses and doing nothing about it. Howard told him that they had been doing something. I think Howard’s in line for a nervous breakdown. And Ian Tulloch is on the warpath too.”
“I saw him on the TV news.”
“He’s called another emergency Board meeting for later today.”
“Where and when?” I asked.
“Here in the office boardroom at two, but you and I are specifically not invited.”
“Do you think they’re going to resign en masse and hand the whole thing back to the Jockey Club?”
“I’ve no idea about that, but I do fear for Howard’s position. I’m not sure that Stephen Kohli is safe either. And if I read the vibes correctly, dear boy, you and I might be up for the boot as well.”
Crispin was a master at reading the vibes, so it didn’t bode particularly well for my mortgage.
“That’s hardly fair,” I said, “not when it was the Board as a whole who took the decision to say nothing. It’s just like those government ministers who say they take full responsibility for something and then they fire their junior aides.”
“‘Theirs not to reason why, / Theirs but to do and die.’”
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