Rarely has a Betfred Epsom Derby winner been pushed so far and so fast from the spotlight into the wings as Christmas Day was on Saturday. It was as if Santa Claus became superfluous to December 25th. Events just took over.
The Ronan Whelan-ridden Christmas Day had barely passed the post to become Aidan O’Brien’s 12th blue riband winner when attention swerved to the trainer’s first-string and 3-1 favourite Benvenuto Cellini in 10th. Except, technically, he didn’t run at all.
Officialdom through the British Horseracing Authority stewards twisted itself into a bureaucratic knot that unravelled into a bizarre self-inflicted injury. Benvenuto Cellini was declared a non-runner due to not having got a fair start and so the form book will forever say he didn’t squelch his way around a rain-soaked Epsom at all.
In abysmal weather that turned Epsom’s summer highlight into something more akin to a muddy bumper at Tramore on New Year’s Day, and where much of the pre-race focus was on how the Derby field would navigate its way to the finish, all eyes wound up turning back to the start.
READ MORE
In the seconds just before the gates opened, Benvenuto Cellini inexplicably decided to cock his near-hind leg up on to the running board in his stall. Jockey Ryan Moore twigged it almost simultaneously with the starter pushing the button. The colt blew the start, was away slowly, and never figured in an attritional contest.
The stewards looked at the incident, took Moore’s report into account that he’d hoped to take a much more prominent position in the race, and decided a fair start hadn’t occurred. They declared Benvenuto Cellini a non-runner which for betting purposes meant a 25 per cent deduction in payouts for those who’d backed Christmas Day into 7-1.
It created betting chaos with most, but not all, firms opting to waive the Rule Four and pay out anyway. The immediate financial cost of that is reportedly being counted in the millions. The reputational toll on the biggest betting flat race of the year is more intangible. And in the background is noise sounding suspiciously like cans of worms being opened for the future.
What occurred at the start was clear due to an ITV camera in Benvenuto Cellini’s stall. Due to previous incidents, including a stall malfunction at Epsom in 2023, officials can declare a non-runner if deciding that a runner hasn’t got a fair start. But it’s at their discretion, and on Sunday there was near unanimity that this was a discretionary step too far.
This was not a case of a horse’s chance being compromised by mechanical failure but his own actions. Whatever got into Benvenuto Cellini’s brain to do such a thing, he did it. If, like O’Brien, the stewards opted to put it down to “that’s racing,” there wouldn’t have been a peep. But now, the inevitable speculation will be on where future lines are drawn.
Will horses rearing up in the stalls be deemed to have not had a fair start? What about horses whipping around at the start in jumps races? Will stewards make similar moves if a rider tells them about a supposedly unsatisfactory start where there are no camera shots to examine such a claim? Any BHA line about considering every case on its own merits smacks of ignoring the power of precedence.
“We’re talking an impact of multi-million pounds reputationally and financially. And nobody expected it to happen; this is an extraordinary act of self-sabotage on one of the biggest days, and done in the name of the betting public, which is the most concerning thing. Actually, it was quite the opposite,” Simon Clare of the Entain Gambling Corporation reported on Sunday.
The BHA defended the move, said the decision was in line with procedures in other major global racing jurisdictions, and pointed out that such discretion is there to protect the interests of punters. That might be true, but this looked an unnecessary intervention on the biggest stage of all, and it certainly didn’t protect those who backed the actual winner.
The furore deflected from the greatest moment of Whelan’s career. The 33-year-old rider from Monasterevin rode a pair of Group One winners for O’Brien last year and became the ninth different jockey to ride a Derby winner for the sport’s dominant trainer. As for O’Brien the latest record he claimed was a 50th English classic as well as four-in-a-row in the most famous of them all.
In the Derby’s 247-year history, winners have been jostled out of the spotlight by events. The stewards promoted the 100-1 shot Aboyeur to first in the 1913 Derby but all that’s remembered of that race now is the death of suffragette Emily Davison who ran out in front of the horses. Aboyeur never won again. The Irish Derby later this month could really be Christmas Day.
