David Thiselton
One aspect of horseracing that the public often appear to have a misunderstanding of is the lodging of objections, with particular reference to who lodges the objection.
A regular lament heard in racing circles, in the case where a jockey, trainer or owner lodges an obvious looking objection, is, “Why did the stipendiary stewards not lodge the objection? They must have been sleeping.”
The common misconecption is that trainers, jockeys and owners only object if the stipendiary stewards do not object.
This is false.
The relevant rules on the lodgement of objections state:
67.7.1 An OBJECTION shall be made in WRITING and signed by the PERSON lodging it, within the time limits laid down in RULE 68.2. Except when lodged by a LICENSED OFFICIAL, such confirmation shall be accompanied by the prescribed fee, which may be refunded at the discretion of the OBJECTION BOARD.
67.7.2 An OBJECTION may only be lodged by the following PERSONS: 67.7.2.1 LICENSED OFFICIALS; 67.7.2.2 the OWNER and/or TRAINER, or their AUTHORISED AGENT, of a HORSE which participated in the RACE concerned; 67.7.2.3 the RIDER of a HORSE in the RACE concerned.
68.2 Notification of intention to object on any of the grounds referred to in this RULE shall be given verbally to the Clerk of the Scales and/or the Chief Stipendiary Steward of the SB prior to the ALL CLEAR being announced in terms of RULE 66.3.3. The notification of an OBJECTION must be confirmed in WRITING and the prescribed fee paid, or the OBJECTION withdrawn within a further 3 minutes from the expiry of the time referred to in 86 this RULE. There will be no penalty if the notification of intention to object is withdrawn within the stipulated time. In the event that any OBJECTION referred to in this RULE is not confirmed, such OBJECTION shall lapse.
The stipendiary stewards, upon seeing obvious interference in a race that might have affected the result, will immediately announce a “race review”. This is relayed to the commentator, who announces it publicly.
The stipes will then have a look at the race replays and decide whether there are grounds for an objection or not.
Close races are usually accompanied by emotions and this is particularly the case when a horse who should have won is hampered and loses narrowly.
The end result is that a trainer, jockey or one of the other connections, will sometimes burst into the boardroom and lodge an objection.
The stipendiary stewards might still be reviewing the race when this happens.
They cannot stop one of the connections from objecting.
As the rule states any one of the following may lodge an objection: a licensed official, the trainer or owner or their authorised agent, or the jockey.
The only difference when one of the connections objects, as opposed to one of the licensed officials, is that the former will have to pay a prescribed fee in order to lodge the objection.
This fee is forfeited if the stipes consider the objection to have been unwarranted. In addition, they may in rare cases impose a fine not exceeding R3000 on the PERSON lodging the OBJECTION.
The question then is why would one of the connections risk the fee when a stipendiary steward could object?
The answer could be that in an obvious case they would know there is no chance of the fee being forfeited, but they might believe the time in which the objection has to be lodged could lapse and would not want to risk that. An objection being lodged might also simply serve as an emotional release.
Tied in with the first common misconception mentioned is the belief that if the stipendiary stewards do not object, the objection has less chance of being upheld. The likely reason for this is due to the misconception that if the stipes decided not to object then they must have believed there were no grounds for it and they were thus unlikely to change their minds in the ensuing objection inquiry.
The other common public belief is that if the stipendiary stewards object there is more chance of the objection being upheld.
There is an inkling of truth in this, because the stipes will generally view the interference from all angles and in much more detail than the connections would have been able to. Obviously that takes a bit of time and the stipes will get a good idea of the nature of the interference during the review.
Likening this to football, when VAR suggests to the referee that he or she should come and have a look at the VAR replay, the decision is usually reversed because VAR would have been able to look at the incident in a lot more detail.
In horseracing the longer the review takes, the more chance there is of one of the connections objecting. This is why in the 50/50 cases it is often one of the connections, rather than a licensed official, who objects.
However, it is not necessarily the case that an objection lodged by the stipes will be upheld, because the first part of the process is just to ascertain whether the objection is warranted and there then has to be deliberation on whether the interfered with horse would otherwise have won the race.
Furthermore, only one stipendiary steward lodges the objection and he or she is then not allowed to be on the ensuing objection board.
If there are not three stipes to do it when one of them steps down then another licensed official is co-opted on to the objection board.
The officials on the objection board might well disagree with the official who lodged the objection.
