After an identity mix-up with two of his horses at Southwell last month, trainer Ivan Furtado has been handed a £2,000 fine by the British Horseracing Authority (BHA).
The mix-up at Southwell was the second time an incident like this has happened within six months, after an incident at Yarmouth last July that saw Fyre Cay, the well-backed odds-on favourite for the opening two‑year-old contest, edged out by 50/1 shot Mandarin Princess, only for it later to emerge that the wrong horse, Millie’s Kiss had run and won the race. Leaving many punters equally as angry as out of pocket.
The events have led to the BHA signalling its intention to implement further steps to ensure that this type of incident isn’t repeated. Issuing a statement after the meeting at Southwell, the BHA stated: “The fact that the horses were not correctly identified on the racecourse was as a result of human error and not a technological fault. Where appropriate, steps are being taken internally to address the performance-related issues that arise from these errors.”
Furtado was subsequently fined £1,000 pound for each horse, after a panel deemed that “the ultimate responsibility for the true identification of a horse to run in a race under rules lies with the trainer.”
The Doncaster based trainer responded: “I wanted to get as low a fine as possible but I made a mistake and I have to pay for that. I will learn from it and make sure it doesn’t happen again.
“As we are learning, I hope the BHA is learning as well. I want to apologise to the public and to the owners involved. I hope we won’t be talking about this ever again.”
Furthermore, following the trial the BHA emphasised that it would be taking “positive and swift action” in order to improve technology in its horse identification process.
Source: SBC News
