Integrity Services

Apologies for no blog yesterday to cover the MRC meeting at Mornington but I had no Telsta service (broadband,landline and mobile all out) yesterday.Annoying but bearable considering what many others in Queensland are going through right now.
Racing Victoria's Integrity Services is in the news with their "compliance unit" dropping in on stables mid-morning and stumbling across/finding all kinds of naughtyness going on involving syringes,tubes etc.
As a punter I'm glad to see something happening but can't help feeling that without the shake up from outside (ABC Four Corners and The Age) things generally would have carried on much as before.
Victoria's Integrity Services Commissioner,Sal Perna last week emphasized  that after conducting a thorough review he didn't believe that all in all things were too bad.He later went on to call on Victoria Police to initiate a dedicated Racing Squad to deal with issues of corruption in Victorian Racing.If you want the police to set up a special task force Sal, I suspect, deep down you know things are far from good and plenty of nonsense is happening on a regular basis.
I've been following Victorian racing virtually daily for quite a few years now.Compared to what used to happen around the gaff tracks in the UK when I was punting there in the 80's things are much better here now than they were there then.Stewards over there at that time were unpaid dignataries who turned up to officiate out of a sense of duty and to enjoy a good well lubricated lunch at the same time.Many were owners with horses in training with the same trainers they were officiating over.Hardly an enviroment condusive to fair play and impartiality.
Skullduggery isn't quite so blatant now it's subtler.Those of us following things on a daily basis and expecting to trade profitably out of it soon develop a nose for when things aren't quite kosher.There are trainers and jockeys viewed with suspicion and caution not out of malice but out of hard earned experience.Money speaks all languages and lack of it connected to horses ridden by or trained by those in question generally tells you plenty and more besides.
The reality is that racing in any jurisdiction is as straight as the overseeing authority demands that it be.In Hong Kong I would say it is as straight as it is possible for it humanly to be.Integrity overides all other considerations there.In the competitive world that most of us inhabit we get better by striving and emulating those who we accept are doing things excellently.If you want people to spend their leisure dollar punting on horse racing you need to make integrity paramount.If your running for cover and flapping like a headless chook when the likes of Four Corners and The Age get stuck into you it's because they are touching a raw nerve and you know it.Surely it is time to aspire to making the integrity of Australian racing on a par with that of Hong Kong.As the premier racing state and with all the recent hullabaloo it's time for Victoria to take the lead here.
A good place to start would be by allocating some serious resources into restructuring Integrity Services probably at the expense of prize money.This would send a loud and clear message that punters are being put first and that their money (they are the largest and most consistent contributors to the coffers of racing) is being used to structure an integrity division that they can be confident is operating at world's best practise levels.Whether the current chief steward Terry Bailey is the man to take things forward is debatable.I believe Bailey compromised his authority in his handling of the Danny Nikolic case by allowing the issue to become personal.The animus between the two men was well known for some time in racing circles and the blame for that has to lie with Bailey not Nikolic.A chief steward has to be seen to be above petty dislikes etc. and by allowing things to fester as he did Bailey undermined the integity of his office.Whatever one thinks of NSW chief steward Ray Murrihy
(he made an arse of himself about Betfair both here and overseas) his handling of Jockeys indiscretions has been thorough and fair.Jockeys and Trainers may not like him but his judgements are seen to be fair and impartial and as such he has the respect that his office demands.
The bloke who's Chief Steward in Queensland doesn't really rate a mention.