SPANISH-TRAINED Bannaby, fourth to Rite Of Passage in the Ascot Gold Cup, evoked memories of the 1988 Ascot highlight.
The Spanish-owned, French-trained Royal Gait swept to success under Cash Asmussen. Second, beaten five lengths, was Greville Starkey on Sadeem, the favourite, with Pat Eddery a further 15 lengths in arrears on Sergeyevich. Perfectly straightforward, but for an incident two furlongs out in which Tony Clark was unseated from El Conquistador, pacemaker for Sadeem.
The Ascot stewards held an enquiry to determine the cause of Clark’s fall, as the rules required them to do. They will have watched the patrol films, side on and head on, as the rest of the racing world would subsequently do, many times over. The film coverage clearly showed that El Conquistador, having set a furious pace, had wobbled into the plastic rail, bounced off it and collided with Royal Gait. Greville Starkey, a past master at winning races in the stewards’ room, had reacted instantly, moving Sadeem on to Royal Gait’s quarters, his body language signifying that Royal Gait had caused interference to his mount, sufficient to cost him the race. Sadeem had been beaten by five lengths.
What seemed a ‘no brainer’ to any experienced race watcher clearly proved quite otherwise to the stewards and their ‘professional’ advisors, Major Steveney and Major Ker. To universal dismay they disqualified Royal Gait, placing him last and awarded the Ascot Gold Cup (£69,841) to Sadeem. Moreover, they found Asmussen guilty of ‘careless riding, suspending him for seven days.’ As a miscarriage of justice the Ascot stewards’ findings were on a par with Widgery’s interpretation of Bloody Sunday.
The true culprit was Tony Clark, setting such a suicidal gallop on El Conquistador that he contravened the rule which states that each jockey must ride to obtain the best possible placing. Instead, he had ridden his mount to exhaustion, thereby triggering off a chain of events from which the favourite – his stable companion – had unjustly benefitted. If anyone was guilty of ‘careless riding’, or even ‘reckless riding’, it was Tony Clark.
Your correspondent – also a ‘professional’ stewards’ advisor – was horrified by his colleagues’ wilful re-writing of a Group 1 event, the highlight of that Royal Ascot. And said so. Political suicide to condemn one’s superiors that undoubtedly was. And so it proved, though not before this sequel.
A week later Newcastle featured its historic Northumberland Plate, otherwise known as the ‘Pitmen’s Derby’. Starkey and trainer Guy Harwood – doubtless still marvelling at their undeserved Gold Cup windfall – ran the fancied Zero Watt.
However, before racing began, word reached the stewards’ room that a group of Spaniards, clutching sinister holdalls in a motorway café, had been overheard scheming to shoot Starkey – at Newmarket races that very afternoon. When this intelligence was swiftly relayed to Newmarket’s clerk of the course, he was perplexed. Newmarket wasn’t racing that day. Then the penny dropped. Newmarket wasn’t, but Newcastle was!
Your correspondent immediately relayed this startling news to his superior on the day, who reacted by saying that he must rush off and inform Starkey in the jockeys’ room. Not so fast, old cock. Ascot may have been a disaster, but Newcastle was not to be tarred with that stupid southern brush. Rather would we convene the stewards panel, brief them and then bring Starkey before them to be officially informed of this rumoured assassination plot.
Guy Roxburghe, the chairman, spelled it out to Starkey adding that in the circumstances, he might forgo the mount on Zero Watt – his only booked ride – with the stewards’ consent. Silence. Starkey looked down at his boots, endlessly it seemed. Then, without raising his head, the jockey said he would ride. Good call? Bad call? No one felt sure. One of the biggest tracks in Britain, Newcastle is almost two miles in circumference, surrounded by trees and impossible to police.
Even something as routine as recapturing fallers in jump races at Gosforth Park can take ages. Was Starkey doing anyone a favour? Would discretion perhaps have been the greater part of valour?
Late into the parade ring, Starkey rode Zero Watt, beaten a short head in a pulsating finish by South African crack ‘Muis’ Roberts on Stavordale, and quickly made his escape back to the safety of the south. No shots had been heard.
Mercifully. No, it never did make the papers, whereas Timeform declared the Ascot verdict “an affront to anyone with a sense of justice and fairness”.