Trainer Jim Best was sensationally found guilty of all charges relating to the running and riding of Echo Brava and Missile Man at a disciplinary hearing on Friday.
Jim Best
Best had been charged with instructing the jockey Paul John to stop the two horses. He was also charged with acting in a manner prejudicial to the integrity, proper conduct or good reputation of horseracing.
Paul John was found guilty of two charges of intentionally failing to ensure horses ran on their merits.
Best now faces the possibility of a long ban from racing, although penalties may not be decided until a later date.
Conditional jockey John had told the disciplinary panel that his former boss had told him to stop horses on two occasions.
The pair were referred to the panel over the running and riding of Missile Man at Towcester on December 17 last year. Four days before that John had been banned for 14 days for his ride on another Best-trained runner, Echo Brava, who was making his hurdling debut in a novice event at Plumpton.
On both occasions John was deemed not to have ridden the horses to achieve their best possible placing. John alleged that on both occasions Best had told him to stop each horse.
John told the hearing that he had been instructed to get Echo Brava beaten 33 lengths at Plumpton, and that Missile Man was “just having a run”. The jockey said he had deliberately gone wide to “lose as much ground as possible” and both he and Echo Brava “finished full of running and energy” in fifth, beaten 24 lengths.
On Friday, representatives of Best and the BHA put their final arguments to the panel.
Jonathan Laidlaw QC, representing Best, described John as “dishonest and manipulative” and said the case against his client was based on the evidence of a single witness with a motive to lie because he had done a deal with the BHA to save his riding career.
“It is not just that he has lied,” he said. “Mr John is a witness who has every reason to fabricate and to invent.”
Laidlaw said by leaving Best, his fourth yard in 18 months, John was at risk of never being able to ride again. “He has sought and, by misleading the BHA into believing he was a truthful witness, he has cut a deal intended to get him back into racing.”
As a result he argued John was “a witness whose credibility is destroyed and upon whose evidence no reliance could safely be placed”.
Graeme McPherson QC, for the BHA, said John had told the truth and it was Best who had lied.
Videos of John’s riding of Echo Brava and Missile Man did not show an incompetent jockey riding badly but were “classic stopping rides”, he argued.
He described as “absurd” Best’s case that John was lying as part of “a deceitful pre-ordained plan” to secure favourable treatment from the BHA to enable him to reapply for his licence. The BHA had repeatedly confirmed there had been no deal nor had John sought one.
John was portrayed by Best and his staff as “a most unattractive character” by claiming he was a drunk, unfit, lazy, argumentative and rude, an incompetent rider and irresponsible and unprofessional.
McPherson said the panel would have to consider whether these criticisms were genuine or, as the BHA said, a character assassination that was “the act of a desperate man who knows that, unless he can dupe the panel into concluding that Paul John is lying, he faces a very severe penalty”.
He said there was “overwhelming” evidence John was telling the truth. The two horses were stopped by John “because that was what he had been instructed to do by Best”.
If the panel found that Best instructed the claimer to stop the horses, reinforcing the orders with the threat of the loss of his job and licence and then lied at the stewards’ inquiries to distance himself from the rides of which the trainer had been the architect, then Best was guilty of acting in a manner prejudicial to the integrity, proper conduct or good reputation of racing in Britain, McPherson said.
“That is the view that any right-minded person would take of Mr Best’s conduct,” McPherson added.
www.racingpost.com
