French Racing / La Casaque Noire / 08 October 2007 /

Dylan's zig-zag path to victory should lead to harmonisation of the rules, says La Casaque Noire

Despite taking over half an hour to reach their decision, the French stewards made an awful cock-up allowing Dylan Thomas to keep the Arc. To anyone that understands the rules, it should have been obvious in 30 seconds, let alone 30 minutes. Before everyone starts screaming about him winning on merit and not improving his position, you have to remember that the rules this side of the channel are much different.

Simply translated the relevant rule states "when a horse bumps, pushes or hinders another the stewards can disqualify the horse, placing it behind the horse(s) it interferes with."

Incredibly, it says nothing about obligation. Neither does it mention improving one's own position, or indeed, preventing an interfered horse gaining its best possible placing. However, previous application of the rule clearly indicates that it is to be interpreted thus - if either one's position is improved or you prevent another finishing as high up in the money as possible, you shall be disqualified and placed behind those interfered with.

When Fallon started asking his charge for an effort he veered right, first into Zambezi Sun, who lost all momentum. Closer to home, as he continued to go right, he stopped his stablemate Soldier Of Fortune.

Although one can justly argue that Dylan Thomas won on merit and that he didn't prevent Zambezi Sun finishing in the money, Soldier Of Fortune would surely have finished fourth. And we shouldn't ignore the fact that Youmzain was a minor victim too.

So, it was a simple choice of placing Dylan Thomas behind Soldier Of Fortune or going the whole way and putting him behind Zambezi Sun.

But I didn't see the third choice coming - doing nothing. I won't imply that the power of the winning connections had any bearing on this bewildering decision, but I'm struggling to come up with anything better.

Anyway, an incident like this is a clear case for the need to harmonise racing rules across countries.

We already have Fallon riding in Ireland and France but banned in Britain and USA. That's bad enough, but the BHB has interference rules that allow a horse with near reckless pilots to keep the race, whereas in France, the slightest lean on a rival (normally) means disqualification.

Louis Romanet, the director General of France Galop, is also the president of the International Federation of Horseracing Authorities, one of whose goals is: "to co-ordinate the rules of racing of the member countries."

It all sounds very good, but maybe we should go a step further and have one body or independent stewards for all countries, as the French are clearly capable of getting it totally wrong (or worse, happy to fudge a result when it suits them).

Youmzain's trainer Mick Channon has already unsuccessfully tried appealing against a disqualification, but that failed due to flawed reasoning and dare I say it, ignorance of the rules. This time he surely must try again, and his case is better than excellent - but I wouldn't bet against France Galop closing ranks and upholding the original decision once more.

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