SportingPost

I must add to that Easy....
If NHA find ANYTHING, the Trainer us the responsible person and they must prosecute him accordingly....
Shit, anyway, still watching the cameras, some horses lying down now, Trip Tease nibbling on some teff...a few others also up again, no alarms tonight, no movement in yard...if it happens i will be alerted....got to try get some sleep now and during this week with the Mercury Sprint coming up on the weekend....

Louis as you say there is no reason for you to lie. I must ask what the motive is for these actions assuming what you have written is fact? My Dick Francis inspired mind is thinking that someone must be receiving some sort of financial gain out of this? The apparent lengths that people are going to, to get at your horses can surely only be financially motivated? So taking this a level further, who would gain from horses not running up to their form? Only people who would benefit from making money from the horse not winning, surely? So that leaves bookmakers. Do we really have bookmakers who would be prepared to "stop" a horse for their financial benefit? I don't know. One thing I do know is that if the NHRA were serious about stamping out corruption it wouldn't be too hard to get the betting sheets on races where you had short priced runners who you felt ran below expectations and to see who had been stretching your horses odds.

The part I find sad is the trainer's broken trust with the grooms. I now have a very different picture of the roles grooms play.

The post by Louis does not surprise me one bit.

I've had conversations with racing people,going back a few years,where I tried to convince them that as a form studier I was seeing a trend of fancied horses in Natal who were running way below form.

These were specifically horses that looked absolutely unbeatable.They weren't only being beaten,they kept running unplaced,and most were being 'scrubbed' by the rider more than 500m from home.The only thing that seemed to make any sense to me was that they were being nobbled to lose.

What seemed even more obvious to me was that this had to be being done by grooms,and it was across various stables so it appeared to me to be some sort of syndicate that was doing this.

Of course my 'rantings' were giggled at,but I'm more convinced than ever now that this is exactly what was going on.

That's more than informative LG. Thank you for that insight. It does give ME/punters a different view of the challenges you guys go through.

Over The Air


Yes it must all boil dow to money but maybe not as easy as on might think.

It could be that with SA race cards coming out so far in advance unscrupulous people have plenty time to do their thing

It could be that a stable going from 30 horses to 70 horses is seemed to be a threat and needs to be "stopped"

it could be that a person that is opinionated in the betterment of our sport needs to be trimmed down a peg or 2

It could be as simple as a disgruntled groom

It could be an ex owner that wants to prove a point

the list can literally go on and on…..its NOT DICK FRANCIS this is real life and a person suffering and tearing his hair out , smoking 200 fags a day and telling me "bud i don't know what the fuck is going on"

What ever it was and who ever it was forgot 1 thing and a very important thing at that.

The horses went up from 30 to 70 but the owners did not double, you see Louis is a friend and in his darkest hour we his patron's stood by him and after the cameras were installed and the horses ran to form all is well again.

I actually thought the sporting post might have mentioned lastnights postings from Goosen

louisg wrote: !

Dis bietjie dik vir 'n daler

Huchergh
That is EXACTLY what the horses did - they would jump, travel well in the race and then, in Gunther ' s words, they would "empty out in 3 strides", some 500 meters out. And go out the back door.
Interesting is that from what I have heard and seen, the same thing happened to Deo Juvente. ...

Louis you have my sympathy. Just curious what would you say is the motive behind these acts ?

Race over, I really am not sure. We have looked at it from many angles. Spent hours trying to find a pattern etc. Every time it narrows down to two potentials - the first being money/ betting and the other being sabotage/pro jealousy etc.
As far as Trip Tease is specifically concerned there is more to the story.... we are at a sensitive stage in our investigation right now so I cannot say more....we expect a breakthrough soon....Some additional leads to follow up....

What has been disappointing is that NHA investigater has not ever followed up with us. We are on our own and the process is very expensive. But, we will see it through.

I guess it's a case of guilty, until you prove yourself innocent.