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.