It will be a specific offence, and that will help us, together with a commission that will have powers to search, seize, interview and so on. I just hope that more people will come forward when they know of wrongdoing.”Which brings us back to where we began: public perception The doom-mongers won’t disappear. Suggestions of mischief on the Turf make good copy; the public have an appetite for it. How else does one explain the continued popularity of Dick Francis’s novels? But at least a first-rate Festival has redressed the balance somewhat. “They’re talking about a new offence of ‘cheat’ being introduced next year. Between, say, a jockey stopping a horse at one end, and those benefiting from it at the other There is simply a lack of real evidence. “Hopefully one of the ways round that will be [the creation of] a Gambling Commission,” says Scotney, who says that investigation into the Ballinger Ridge (Fallon) and Ice Saint (Sean Fox) incidents would require several more weeks yet.

I would also say that before exchanges existed people pulled strokes and it wasn’t so easy to identify them. In the future, we’re going to have a far better opportunity to catch people involved.”The problem, as always, has been to establish a link. It’s just that certain factors make it easier now to identify malpractice than they have previously, not least the [betting] exchanges Some see that as a negative, others as a positive I’m in the middle But what I do say is that they’re there, so I use them I have to say that they help me in that sense. But where there’s money, people will try to influence the result. A very high percentage of racing is good; as good a product as anywhere in the world.”The former detective chief superintendent in the Metropolitan Police, who has investigated crack cocaine rings, serious robberies and murders, adds: “I’ve had some knowledge of racing for 30 years, and I don’t think it’s any worse than it was in the past. Indeed, circulating at the Festival was a man who, backed by considerable knowledge on the subject, vigorously argues against that view. Paul Scotney, the new head of the Jockey Club’s security department, poured scorn on those who submit that horseracing is institutionally corrupt “No, it’s not A very high percentage of races are clean,” he says “There’s no doubt about that.

It left Baracouda’s owner, J P McManus, better known as a significant Manchester United shareholder and, together with his countryman John Magnier, the nemesis of Sir Alex Ferguson, to reflect: “There is good and bad in every situation.” Iris’s Gift is trained, you understand, at his Jackdaws Castle stable.What was of crucial importance was any suggestion that punters have been dissuaded from betting by the insinuation from some pundits and media organisations that the whole game is rotten. In the Stayers’ he persuaded Gary Hutchinson, rider of Solerina, that the strategy to defeat Baracouda was to establish a sensible gallop, and not a breakneck pace which would have been ideal tactically for the champion Hutchinson did just that, and the plan worked to perfection. Iris’s Gift settled just behind Solerina, galloped clear after the second last, and despite a rally by Baracouda, secured a narrow but emphatic victory. Just for a moment, you felt you knew what it was like to be a “scab” mineworker under the gaze of Arthur Scargill.Fortunately, if Cheltenham had been asked to produce an antidote for the poison, it could scarcely have achieved more. Not only a redoubtable performance from the champ, who is surrounded by four of the most charismatic and media-friendly racing folk in trainer Knight, her husband and assistant Terry Biddlecombe, jockey Jim Culloty and owner Jim Lewis, but a riveting support cast dominated, in this spectator’s view, by Barry Geraghty’s riding of the Jonjo O’Neill grey Iris’s Gift in the Stayers’ Hurdle.Geraghty had been a picture of frustration the previous day, having departed ignominiously from the Champion Chase favourite, Moscow Flyer.

Anyone who has visited a racing stable will confirm that the remainder enjoy a life which contrasts starkly with that of many of those animals we slaughter for food.Nevertheless, here we were. Two days before National Hunt racing’s scene-stealing three days, and the sport was not only crooked but possibly cruel as well. Often it is merely the result of a limb fracture, but as the former Channel 4 pundit Brough Scott explained, the alternative is prolonged and painful recuperation which will still leave the horse lame. When your own wife, who normally enjoys an afternoon’s racing, looks up from perusing the Sunday newspapers, and opines that the animal rights advocate “has a point” regarding the number of horses put down each year, it is somewhat disconcerting.The percentage humanely destroyed in comparison with the racehorse population and the number of races they run is, thankfully, extremely small. Then, apropos of nothing, a debate on this subject: is horseracing cruel? It was followed by the inevitable request from the BBC these days that viewers should vote on the matter This morning, the result of the poll will be broadcast.