Am I Blue's win at Wyvern Ices Handicap Hurdle could be investigated by BHA
It’s not always good to win. Sometimes when you win, you get accused of rigging the game because no one believes that you just won out of the blue. It could be argued that those are the best kinds of victories when your odds are so bad and you still somehow manage to win.
But that is only if you actually win fairly and do not rig the sport in anyway. That is the question the British Horseracing Authority is now looking to investigate. The surprise winner in this case is ‘Am I Blue.’ The horse is under the ownership of Delyth Thomas and has been trained by her. That makes his win at Hereford all the more amazing. Delyth is not someone who could be considered a successful trainer. She has gone without a win for 1973 days and 44 runners until Am I Blue finally won. After such a long and uninterrupted series of unsuccessful runs, it was a spectacular 19 length win at the Wyvern Ices Handicap Hurdle.
Delyth wasn’t the only one down on their luck. Am I Blue was no winner either. On her previous run, the horse finished 12th out of the 12 participants of the race. In 16 starts, she has had no success until Hereford. She finished far behind the other races – to be exact, she’s lost a total of 22, 75 metres and 88 lengths in her last 3 races. Coming off that history, it’s no surprise that the Delyth trainee raised quite a few eyebrows at Hereford.
Am I Blue had 25 to 1 odds to win the first place but before the race began, punters had her bumped to 5 to 1. Some of it makes some kind of sense. Initially, Dean Coleman was scheduled to ride Am I Blue (his only race of the day, did someone say curious?) but in the last moments Dean called in sick and the much more experienced Richard Johnson took over. It is irrelevant now if Dean was in fact unwell or did Am I Blues connections just wanted Richard at the helm. In the end, it was the experience of Richard who rode Am I Blue. That, to an extent, explains the sudden interest in Am I Blue by punters but overall, the entire thing is still somewhat suspicious.
Am I Blue’s former trainer Tim Vaughan was not shocked, but pleasantly surprised. He said Am I Blue had the potential but the weight wasn’t right for her. “She was very consistent with me but she was running off a mark of 100," he said. "Since she left me, she's been dropped a considerable amount,” he added. Since she was sold to Delyth and has left Tim’s care, she has come down to 171 lbs and a rating of 83 as opposed to the 100 she was at with Vaughan.
That change didn’t come about in a time span of a week though. Added up, it’s still too little to truly make sense of the race. It’s very likely that everything was in order for the race and it was just an unlikely combination of coincidences. It would be about time considering Delyth had won nothing in 5 and a half years. But then again, it could also be more than what is apparent.
Considering the recent match-fixing controversy involving cricket, British gamblers are being eyed with somewhat unwarranted suspicion. While it’s only prudent that the British Horseracing Authority takes a proper look at the circumstances surrounding the race, it would be best if they don’t launch an all out witch hunt.
“It remains entirely possible that everything was above board, but it is just as important to prove if that was the case as it is to prove it wasn’t,” Spokesman for the BHA, Paul Struthers said. He said that BHA’s integrity, service and licensing department would look into the circumstances surrounding Am I Blue’s victory and would take note of the explanation for the dramatically improved form.
Tags: