Horse Racing's Dark Culture

It took two and a half years for the City of London police to progress their investigation into alleged race-fixing to a point where charges could be laid last week against 11 individuals, including Kieren Fallon, and it could be a year or more before the cases start to come to court. Despite that, however, it was tempting for many in the sport to see these developments as the beginning of the end of a long and traumatic process.

Not so. The police investigation that started in January 2004 may now have moved on to the next stage of the judicial process, but the Horseracing Regulatory Authority has been far from idle itself in recent months. When Paul Scotney arrived as racing's head of security in late 2003, it signalled a profound change of attitude among the regulators which was always going to take time to produce results.

The seed that was planted with Scotney's appointment is now starting to bear fruit, but far from being at the beginning of the end, the sport is not even close to the end of the beginning. The announcement of charges against both licensed and unlicensed individuals could start to feel like a weekly occurrence as several security department investigations approach a conclusion, to the extent that some may start to wonder where it will all end.

Yet the entire process is necessary and inevitable if racing is to prosper as a modern leisure industry. What Scotney, with the full backing of the Jockey Club from his initial appointment and the HRA now, intends to do is not simply catch and punish the cheats who are in the sport at the moment, but to challenge, and change, the ingrained attitudes at all levels of the industry that have often allowed them to carry on cheating without any fear of detection.

It is a process that will force many in the industry to face up to the fact that practices they once thought acceptable - on the basis, perhaps, that everyone else does it, and always has - will no longer be tolerated. Such a wholesale change in the mindset of a deeply conservative business will take time, a generation at least, to take root, and take a great deal of vigilance to police.

For the first time in the sport's recent history, though, the will to see the job through seems to be there. Consider, for example, the ongoing attempt to reach a definition of "inside information" and the circumstances under which it is, and is not, acceptable to exploit it.

This is a highly ambitious exercise, since there is so little agreement - in fact, none whatsoever - as to what constitutes inside information. But at some point, a definition will be reached, or imposed, on the sport, and another nail driven into the coffin of the nod, wink and whisper culture.

Like a patient with a rotting tooth who can't face the thought of going to the dentist, the process of addressing and treating racing's problems will at times seem unnecessarily painful. Perhaps if it is just left alone, people are tempted to think, the wretched thing will settle down by itself.

More likely, though, is that the rot and infection will spread. The man with the drill is always the sensible if painful option. Scotney and the HRA are armed with a large set of pliers and an urge to start tugging. It will not be a pleasant experience in the short term, but when the pain does die away we will wonder why we didn't have it out years ago.