ON THIS OCCASION, MORRISSEY IS WRONG...

...We like it when our friends become successful.

Goodwill towards one’s peers may not always be the most abundant commodity among those engaged in the competitive world of sports media and journalism – scoop or be outscooped, eat or be eaten (or even elbow or be elbowed, if that footage of Claude Duval getting physical after Frankel’s QE II Stakes win of 15 months ago is any guide).

I’d like to think that racing folk generally score higher than most in terms of kindly disposition towards one another overall, though, and it’s certainly been nothing other than a pleasure to see a pal and former colleague in Katherine Fidler take to her new role as Bloodstock Reporter for the Racing Post with such aplomb - even sharing column space with the likes of Simon Holt and Gordon Elliott in this week’s Monday Jury (good luck with Swing Bowler or and/or My Tent Or Yours this Saturday, Kat).

Already extensively published in the past two years by virtue of bloodstock-driven tipping pieces for Bettrends.co.uk and Pointing reviews for both the Sporting Life and (briefly) Racing Plus, Kat spent most of that period primarily serving as one-third of the indefatigable trio – alongside the also wholly admirable Viv Buckby and Paul Champion – whose management of entries, results, web content and cantankerous old racereaders effectively rendered them the day-to-day heartbeat of the Point-to-Point Racing Company (Weatherbys Chase as was). Her replacement won’t want for work.

She’ll definitely be hugely missed; and one only hopes her decision to leave Wellingborough for the bright lights and cosy warm offices of Canary Wharf wasn’t accelerated by an episode late last April when, as part of her and Viv’s occasional deputising for the Midlands Area Public Relations Officer, Kat stepped into the coldest, wettest, muddiest, ghastliest of breaches as my Racing Post Weekender on-course reporter for the Atherstone Point-to-Point at the (ordinarily entirely lovely) old Rugby racecourse in Clifton-on-Dunsmore.

Humble apologies for my part in inflicting that particular brand of Purgatory upon you, Kat – I owe you one even now. I also understand that the trenchfoot won’t prove irreparable.

NEVER MIND THE CLOWN - WHAT NEXT FOR THE WARRIOR?

So comical in execution were they to watch, Sacha Stappaerts’ uniquely successful attempts to stop her mount Eastern Warrior in a mile race at Mons (also known as Ghlin) on January 21st might well have warranted a shriek of “Here come the Belgians! Haaaarrrgghh!” from Stuart Hall, were the veteran broadcaster not otherwise engaged with rather more serious matters at present.

You probably wouldn’t expect Stappaerts’ ride to feature as even a nice gentle introduction in any “spot the offence” test that might be sat as part of a BHA job interview (and having undergone one for an Integrity Officer post nearly three years ago, I can promise you – and anyone thinking of putting in for the two Stipendiary Steward trainerships currently being advertised in the trade press – that these tests do exist). It's hard to believe that the good burghers of High Holborn would ever waste their time and insult your intelligence on anything so conspicuous.

What lay behind the owner-trainer-rider’s truly bizarre ride remains unclear. The possibilities of financial gain for throwing this low-grade lady amateur riders’ contest on the Mons Fibresand are currently being investigated by Arjel, the French gambling authority, but reading between the lines thus far they are being so with little belief of finding anything especially revelatory in the relevant betting patterns. Almost an implied Gallic shrug, even.

The equipment malfunction card has been played, but nothing about the available Equida footage seems to corroborate with Stappaerts’ earliest-espoused view that the stirrups were failing her. That leaves the other touted explanation of inexperience, for which feel free to substitute “incompetence”; but quite what fundamental misunderstanding of how horses function would lead even a comparative greenhorn to conclude that standing up and pulling Eastern Warrior’s head off would aid the gelding’s cause?

Whatever the truth of it, the Belgian has been accorded lots and lots of time to work out how to ride out a finish better on the next occasion she gets chance – which is scheduled to be no earlier than at the completion of the five-year ban from owning, training and riding meted out to her by the Belgian Jockey Club at the weekend.

It, together with the accompanying 10,000euros fine, is certainly a censure intended to make an example of the hapless Stappaerts, her actions having been adjudged to strike deep enough at the heart of a racing jurisdiction evidently keen to raise its pan-European profile beyond the odd race taken by betting shops from Mons or Ostend when the action’s a bit limited elsewhere (in addition to the undeniable but fleeting excitement of Waregem’s Grand Steeple Chase des Flandres meeting each late-August). Had it been entirely within the Belgian Jockey Club’s gift, a lifetime ban would have been passed down.

The lasting damage that this affair has inflicted upon broader confidence in Belgian Racing the product is still to be fully realised, and may not be so for a while yet. As with any such bans that fall under the broad spectrum of non-trying, however, there is always one immediate, and invariably blameless, victim. That’s the horse.

Nothing about the Equida footage indicates that Eastern Warrior wanted to do anything late on other than win the race. And why wouldn’t he - the poor sod had managed to convert only one of six place finishes into a win (from 11 outings all told) when in the care of John Hills during 2008 and 2009, the handicapper having worked him out pretty quickly; and the only one of his subsequent mainland European starts to have been added to the Racing Post archive, a second place finish in an autumn 2011 Baden-Baden handicap, suggests it's been at least in part more of the same since then.

Mons a fortnight ago was a going day for Eastern Warrior, and a going day with a vengeance. His initial bad luck was to be partnered by a rider with no intention of letting him “go” – quite the opposite. The absolute tragedy for the Barathea gelding now is that his own punishment is set to be just two years shorter than Stappaerts’ own, and as an already seven-year-old there has to be a very strong possibility that he won’t be seeing a racecourse again as things currently stand.

However merited the accompanying jockey ban might be and frequently is, thirty- or forty-day bans for witless equine accomplices in non-trier judgments in the UK always strike this writer as harsh enough. Three years in the case of Eastern Warrior defies any credible bounds of logic and fairness. It is to be hoped first of all that the ban applies only to Belgium, and that an owner or trainer from one of its neighbours (it has plenty) is moved enough to take him on as a going concern sooner rather than later if so.

ONE LEG TOO FEW - FOR NOW

It would be tempting to suggest that if there were a stable cat at Pam Sly’s Cambridgeshire yard she’d be kicking it by now, would trying to do so with her one remaining fit leg not risk sending her crashing to the floor.

Sometimes when your luck’s out it’s really out.  Already enduring a thin jumps season by her standards (2-38, when there’s typically been at least four winners on the board by now), with stable star Helpston yet to complete in two starts and Kayaan’s pair of thirds in Market Rasen’s two Listed summer hurdles increasingly fading from view, Sly’s mishap before race one at Wetherby last Sunday put a particularly rancid cherry on a most unappealing of cakes.

The first sketchy details of her leg break to flutter onto the assorted social media did little to suggest anything other than what most of us would have assumed to be the likeliest of causes – namely, that Sly’s handicap hurdle runner Chicklemix (Helpston’s half-sister, and the trainer’s first National Hunt winner since May when obliging at the same course on Boxing Day) had lashed out in the box-park or pre-parade ring and scored a direct hit. 

In fact the blameless mare had done nothing of the sort.  Instead, Sly’s upper leg, already the subject of two hip replacements previously, simply gave way completely as horse and human took the downward slope of the horsebox ramp, leaving the trainer wracked in agony and quite possibly wondering what fresh Hell may be next.

Hopefully none, is the answer; but whilst the weekend’s misfortune is clearly as far removed joy-wise from the 2005-6 glory days of 1,000 Guineas heroine Speciosa (the magnesium-scoffing “witch in a box” made good) as it’s possible to get, it’s equally not the only major reverse ever endured during the long training career of Sly, memorably still the target of unjustified vilification by Animal Aid all of two years after Griffins Bar’s freak demise in the 1998 Grand National (two days after a fall in the John Hughes Trophy which none but the most opportunistic ghouls would claim contributed to his tragic accident).

The Thorney (of residence rather than temperament) handler can be taken to emerge fighting, and fighting fit, once again before the summer’s out, though a nice winner as soon as Tuesday at Market Rasen would certainly help the medicine go down for now.  Overnight Post tissue prices of 20-1, 66-1 and 25-1 respectively would count against the chances of Bountiful Catch, Patna and Iconic Rose as winning propositions, but all three are either homebred or from families with which Sly has done really well over the years. 

None yet older than six, they have time enough to come good;  and if not wads of punters’ cash, may they at least carry the goodwill of many in racing towards their ailing handler tomorrow.