THE SUNSHINE COAST NEWSPAPER COLUMN: NO GAIN WITHOUT PAIN IN THE 'KEEPING RACING CLEAN' STAKES

By Graham Potter | Friday, February 23, 2018

Graham Potter writes a weekly column for the Sunshine Coast daily. Due to demand from those having trouble accessing the paper these columns are now also published on HRO courtesy of the Sunshine Coast daily.

Keeping racing ‘clean’ is an onerous and often thankless task.

While the integrity units in all major states have more resources and manpower than ever before they still walk the minefield of lawyers and loopholes so the cases they construct have to be precise and exact to the point where the effort and expense that goes into any investigation is both justified and fruitful in terms of an end result that will benefit racing.

That is easier said than done.

Of course if cheats and others betraying racing’s good name are weeded out and successfully prosecuted racing will ultimately benefit from their demise ... but it seems, in the bigger cases at least, that can’t happen without racing first having to take a major body blow of its own with newshounds keen to feed their readers or viewers, the majority of whom have little to no knowledge of the racing industry, hard hitting coverage of how racing has been rocked by its latest scandal.

That majority then take away a negative view of racing in general.

Even with the not always given concession that most people in racing do the right thing racing’s image is temporarily tarnished in these instances for doing the right thing ... bringing people to account ... with its reputation left in limbo trying to regain its balance on a very slippery slope.

When a banker commits fraud the whole of the banking industry does not suffer a similar fate to racing when something untoward is exposed and there are countless other examples of industries in which the individual, or individuals, involved in transgressions of the law get their comeuppance while their industry sails smoothly on, largely unaffected by that individuals actions.

Which once again all goes to show what a particular beast horse racing is!

It really is an industry like no other.

Stakeholders can take solace in the fact that the actions of a few ... where proven in any worst case scenario ...do not accurately reflect the state of the industry as a whole or the morals of majority of those involved in the sport.

And therein lies its strength which means that credit is due to all of those who carry the game forward on an honourable basis ... even though they seldom make headlines.