An­dre E Bap­tiste

A trav­es­ty of jus­tice took place in San­ta Rosa on Sat­ur­day, and I am not talk­ing about the ten-day sus­pen­sion giv­en to jock­ey Christo­pher Jadoo fol­low­ing the run­ning of race five.

Pun­ters were aghast to see race leader U Crazy Di­a­mond ( 19-1) go­ing wide com­ing in­to the home straight with the horse ap­pear­ing to be trav­el­ling all over favourite Franken­stein (4/5), owned by Shiv­am Ma­haraj and trained by De­r­ick Mosca, and rid­den by Wilmer Galviz. U Crazy Di­a­mond and the oth­er race favourite, Burst of En­er­gy, are al­so trained by Mosca, though owned by Juan Navar­ro.

If go­ing wide was not suf­fi­cient, for the en­tire length of the straight, Jadoo stood mo­tion­less as he can­tered along­side the hard rid­den favourite who even­tu­al­ly pre­vailed by half a length.

For those at the track, you could hear a pen­ny drop.

For those watch­ing the rac­ing chan­nel, it was stun­ning.

In the age of In­sta­gram and Face­book, so­cial me­dia chan­nels lit up with com­ments on the out­come of the race.

Fol­low­ing the race, an en­quiry was held and Jadoo sus­pend­ed.

Now let us put that sus­pen­sion in­to per­spec­tive. Jadoo had, af­ter 13 pri­or rac­ing days, rid­den a mere one race.

For his en­tire ca­reer, Jadoo has rid­den 102 win­ners and is bet­ter known for his work on the morn­ing gal­lops.

As such, a ten-day sus­pen­sion is like­ly to place Jadoo at very lit­tle dis­ad­van­tage es­pe­cial­ly with his weight is­sues.

Does this ban mean that he will not be able to ex­er­cise hors­es and is Per­sona Non Gra­ta at all rac­ing tracks?

Is a ten-day sus­pen­sion ad­e­quate or help­ful in the cur­rent en­vi­ron­ment that is horserac­ing in this coun­try?

For years, rac­ing has been plagued with al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion and jock­eys' races and own­ers/train­ers buy­ing off com­pet­ing rid­ers so as to give their hors­es an un­fair ad­van­tage.

This is the first time that the ev­i­dence has been so bla­tant.

It is there­fore a per­fect op­por­tu­ni­ty for the au­thor­i­ties to in­ter­ro­gate Jadoo to un­der­stand why he would have done what he did.

To achieve this, this mat­ter needs to be re­ferred im­me­di­ate­ly to the non-ex­is­tent Rac­ing Au­thor­i­ty.

These are the peo­ple to de­ter­mine the ap­pro­pri­ate course of ac­tion.

To en­sure Jadoo's co­op­er­a­tion, the penal­ty must be un­der threat of be­ing banned for life from horse rac­ing, not just sus­pend­ed from rid­ing for ten days.

Jadoo prob­a­bly did not make this de­ci­sion on his own, so the TTRA must de­ter­mine the iden­ti­ty of any oth­ers in­volved.

Loss of his liveli­hood must be some­thing that Jadoo did not con­sid­er when agree­ing to par­tic­i­pate in that farce.

Of course, he was al­so not to know that U Crazy Di­a­mond would de­cide to put it all to­geth­er and run his best race in a long time.

This case has giv­en the au­thor­i­ties a great op­por­tu­ni­ty to get to the bot­tom of some of the cor­rup­tion that has tak­en over the sport of kings over the last five years.

While Jadoo was an ob­vi­ous mis­cre­ant, there can be lit­tle doubt that he would not have been the on­ly rid­er in that race to have been con­tact­ed by who­ev­er was de­sirous of se­cur­ing the un­fair ad­van­tage and as such, the TTRA should al­so in­ter­ro­gate every oth­er rid­er.

The own­ers of U Crazy Di­a­mond and the brave pun­ters who bet him down to 19/1 were the sub­jects of fraud.

The de­ci­sion to sus­pend Jadoo was there­fore the least that the stew­ards could do.

Both the in­sti­ga­tors and Jadoo should be very wor­ried at this mo­ment be­cause de­pend­ing on how sin­cere the au­thor­i­ties are, their fu­ture in­volve­ment in the sport could be in jeop­ardy.

The re­al trav­es­ty of jus­tice there­fore will be if the au­thor­i­ties do not use this case to set an ex­am­ple and to al­so get to the bot­tom of one of the big­ger cor­rup­tions tak­ing place in this coun­try.

Horserac­ing's im­age has been se­ri­ous­ly dam­aged...the rest is now up to the Ari­ma Race Club and Rac­ing Au­thor­i­ty.

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