Scandals can't stop record breakers

IN THE SADDLE

THE racing year that was 2002 will draw to a close on Tuesday, but sadly some marvellous memories of great horses, great jockeys and great races will be marred by a series of scandals which television investigators and court cases have brought to the attention of the non-racing public. The inquiries would have been appreciated by almost any other sport, but in an industry run so inefficiently it took a police investigation into drugs and money laundering, and two small screen documentaries to force it to act.

However, amid all the allegedly dodgy trainers and jockeys a series of little gems have helped the sport to sparkle. Not even the antics of Graham Bradley, Jamie Osborne and Ferdy Murphy could deny us the confirmation this week that the upwardly mobile Best Mate is the finest steeplechaser around, the inevitability of AP McCoy becoming the most successful jump-jockey of all time and Rock Of Gibraltar reaching and passing Mill Reef's seemingly unreachable mark of six successive Group One wins.

HORSE OF THE YEAR: No doubts. Rock Of Gibraltar. Victory in the Prix du Moulin at Longchamp was his seventh successive Group One win and only a desperate ride from Mick Kinane denied him the Breeders' Cup mile when the jockey missed the break and then failed to make up his ground soon enough, his flashing late thrust coming two strides too late. Having dropped his reins on Giants Causeway at the Breeders' Cup meeting the year before, Kinane continues to help the cause of those who reckon European raiders should have American jockeys in these ultimate tests of the thoroughbred.

There was no mistaking Rock Of Gibraltar's superiority in the mile division though, despite his 2,000 Guineas success at Newmarket being cribbed due to an unlucky run suffered by more-fancied stable companion Hawk Wing, the horse which went on to fill the same position in the Derby behind another Ballydoyle horse High Chaparral.

As the season went on, so his name shortened. The Rock needed little explanation, his more famous owner Sir Alex Ferguson smiling proudly by his side in the winners' enclosure. Victory at The Curragh was ridiculously easy for a supposed Classic race, success at Royal Ascot absolutely brilliant. Sadly though, because he was never really pushed out in his big-race wins and then lost at Arlington, he has been officially rated merely the equal of the French-trained Keltos. We will never know for sure, but I think I know which one would have started favourite had they ever met.

JOCKEY OF THE YEAR: Has to go to the inimitably brilliant AP McCoy. The man who can, famously, do 10-1 on a slice of chicken, a jaffa cake and a cup of tea, has taken riding over jumps to a new level. His third place in the recent BBC Sports Personality of the Year awards confirmed that others are beginning to appreciate what many of us have believed for years. That here is an athlete of such power, skill and bloody-minded determination that victory is accepted quietly, as if expected, and defeat like a plague on his house.

Many of us disapproved of the way he behaved when Valiramix crashed out of last year's Champion Hurdle with a broken shoulder sustained between hurdles. McCoy described his own feelings as "utter dejection" but projected a more sinister and less animal-friendly image with his apparent lack of concern for the plight of his stricken mount.

A public relations blitz restored some of the damage done and on April 2 his name was thrust into the public spotlight for breaking Sir Gordon Richards' 55-year-old mark of 269 winners in a season. That Richards' record was set in a different sport and achieved between the months of March and November, while McCoy's victories were claimed over a 12-month period, didn't seem to matter to those willing to talk it up. However, McCoy has since become the most successful National Hunt rider of all time and should be rightly lauded for that.

Seven of the 11 best-ever seasonal totals now belong to him, including last year's eventual 289. Five more years at 200 a season and future generations of jockeys will be playing for second place in the all-time list for evermore. We may not see his like again. The jockey of the year by a long, long way.

RIDE OF THE YEAR: McCoy's ride on Iznogoud at Ascot in February was a serious contender in this columnist's book (as was Frankie Dettori's effort in the Japan Cup), but the honour has to go to the now five-times Champion Flat jockey Kieren Fallon, for his winning ride on Golan in the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Diamond Stakes at Ascot in late July.

Racing for the biggest summer prize in Europe over a course which nearly claimed his severely damaged arm a couple of years ago, Fallon produced a magnificent performance to lift Golan home in the last 100 yards.

The race, of course, was won earlier than that, the much maligned and sometimes unfairly treated boy - who, in the eyes of some of the people that populate the upper echelons of the sport, comes from the wrong side of the tracks - riding a quite superb race. His masterly judgment of pace and tactics ensured that Golan arrived exactly where he should have been (and had to be) with half-a-furlong to run, his eyeballing of his subsequent York conqueror Nayef leading to the best head-to-head of the whole season. A supreme performance.

RACING SCANDAL OF THE YEAR: That Fallon was caught up so memorably in the Panorama programme can be put down to that menacing stare he gave the reporter as he questioned him on some alleged jiggery- pokery in Hong Kong. Others fared less well from the investigation and, as well as The Jockey Club being portrayed as a crowd of blithering Colonel Blimps, dear old "Bad Brad", the former jump- jockey, came off worst of all.

His subsequent eight-year ban may yet be reduced on appeal but is unlikely to be quashed. He might see himself as a scapegoat for all of racing's ills but he has done himself no favours along the way.

Roy Keane's ghostwriter might have tried to take the rap for the shocking quotes about "that tackle" but Bradley's court evidence of passing information to money launderers, plus his autobiography confession that he tried to have the starter abandon 1987 Gold Cup to save his chums' bets, was just too much.

I'm sure he's a great guy to know, but racing has to consider itself well rid of him.

TRAINER OF THE YEAR: Not sure. Sir Michael Stoute, maybe, for being so damned clever? Then again, maybe Ian Semple could top the charts if he was at Ballydoyle or with Godolphin. Terry Biddlecombe? Oops, he is not a trainer. Neither's Richard Guest or Peter Scudamore. Too tricky to call. No award.

Happy New Year.

Copyright 2002 SMG Sunday Newspapers Ltd.
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