https://harnesslink.com/new-zealand/apathy-and-tolerance-are-killing-our-industry/The cheaters are everywhere
IRT New Zealand Trotting Cup Day should have been an occasion remembered for our heroes of the harness racing track.
Instead, the day was mired by the announcement of another licensed New Zealand trainer and an associate being caught administering on race day.
Having to field calls and texts from the once-a-year casual followers of our sport about suspected drug cheats instead of celebrating our one big day in the sun left me feeling ashamed to be involved in the sport.
Not because it happened, because there are bad eggs in every industry. But more so, what didn’t happen?
You see for all the public sentiment and outcry over the sentencing of Colin Defilippi and the apparent mishandling of his whip sentencing, the opposite happened when one of our own was caught red handed, and not for the first time I might add.
The horseman are bloody good at pointing fingers at administrators of the sport, but where is the accountability of your own people?
Why is it that nobody is prepared to publicly denounce what can broadly be defined as animal cruelty? The silence is deafening.
The social license of the harness racing industry is hanging by a thread, and yet we have an apparent culture of apathy and tolerance when it comes to license holders who are prepared to administer substances to defenseless animals for nothing more than sheer greed.
The public perception of harness racing is an industry that is rife with corruption. And while that might not be the case, it’s getting bloody hard to defend this sort of behaviour.
Let me remind you that the three trainers to have been caught in the last three years have all had to be caught in the act.
I’m not saying it’s rife.
But the public perception is just that.
And when you have former Chair’s and acting CEO’s publicly going into bat for a ‘kid’ (full grown adult) with a tough upbringing who once again has shat the bed, where too now?
Furthermore, we all want stake money to increase and our best chance of doing so is increasing turnover. But when the punters are leaving in their droves over the perception that outcomes and results are being influenced by other means, the reality is we have little chance.
The TAB have never offered a refund to backers of horses, beaten by horses who were latterly disqualified. So you can hardly blame them for having a sour taste in their mouths and taking their hard-earned dollar elsewhere.
If we as an industry can’t come together and condemn this sort of behaviour publicly, a culture of tolerance and acceptance will inadvertently perpetuate and continue to rot us from the inside out.
Our own people are the single biggest threat to our industries survival. Not the left. Not the greens. And not administrative decisions made by the governing body.
Lastly, nothing in this industry happens by coincidence. I have a hard time believing that of all 365 days in the calendar, the RIB managed to catch somebody in the act on the morning of our biggest day by chance.
Call me cynical, but the timing of some of these frog marches over the last five years makes you start to wonder whether a bigger agenda is at play.
In saying that, no harm, no foul.
If everybody is acting within the rules and respecting our animals, I wouldn’t feel the need to be spouting sanctimony, and nor would the RIB be catching cheats.
Hiding behind a facade of this just being one or two bad eggs is no longer palatable, and for the sake of an industry I care deeply about, I’m happy to stand behind these words and challenge others to do the same.
by Brad Reid, for Harnesslink
Tags: Brad ReidRacing Integrity Board
