Simonsig, who has not raced since winning the Arkle Trophy in March 2013, will miss the King George VI Chase at Kempton Park on Boxing Day after Nicky Henderson, his trainer, admitted defeat in his struggle to get the chaser ready for the feature event of the Christmas schedule.
Simonsig missed the 2013-14 season after developing a leg problem and, while Henderson has stressed in recent weeks that there is nothing physically wrong with the eight-year-old, who has won seven of his eight starts for the trainer, he has also expressed doubts about sending him to a Grade One race for his first start outside novice company.
“He is not going to run in the King George,” Henderson told the Racing Post on Thursday. “He is a bit stop-start at the moment. It has been two steps forward, one step back and sometimes two back. It is frustrating.”
Simonsig was a general 5-1 chance for the King George in October but had drifted to a top price of 12-1 before being taken out of the market on Thursday. Silviniaco Conti, last year’s King George winner, is the narrow favourite to follow up next week at a best price of 11-4 with Champagne Fever, from the Willie Mullins stable in Ireland, next in the list at 7-2.
In addition to Kempton Park eight other tracks are due to race on Boxing Day, including several smaller courses that are hoping to welcome their biggest attendance of the year. With some forecasters starting to predict a cold snap starting on or just after Christmas Day, it is a nervous time for both ground staff and executives as they do what they can to prepare for deteriorating weather conditions.
“There are plenty of forecasts floating around saying all sorts of interesting and not so interesting things,” Edward Arkell, the clerk of the course at Fontwell, said on Thursday. “We’re eight days out and our forecasters don’t like to work much more than five days in advance for accuracy, so we’ll have to wait and see what happens, but we’ve got the ability to cover particularly vulnerable areas with heavy sheeting and we can fleece the rest of the course if needs be.
“But there’s only so much you can do. Our biggest attendance would be either Boxing Day or Ladies’ Day [in May]. We lost Boxing Day the first year we were due to run it [in 2010]. We could have raced on Christmas Day but it got to minus eight on Christmas night and we didn’t have a hope.”
Anthony Knott, who was found to have breached the rules on passing inside information for profit by the British Horseracing Authority’s disciplinary panel last month, has been banned from racing for three years.
Knott is known best as the former owner of the handicap chaser Hunt Ball, the winner of seven races in the 2011-12 season including a Listed event at the Cheltenham Festival. He was found to have passed information to Andrew Callow, a longstanding friend and business associate, that a horse in Knott’s ownership called Theroadtogorey was expected to run poorly in a race on 18 July 2012. Callow then laid the horse to win £6,155 on Betfair.
In its reasons for imposing a three-year ban, which were published on Thursday, the BHA’s disciplinary panel said it had taken Knott’s significant efforts in raising money for racing charities into account.
However, this was counterbalanced by other breaches of the rules committed by Knott in the past, including an incident when the owner allowed a logo advertising the bookmaker Paddy Power to be paintedon to Hunt Ball’s quarters before a race at the Cheltenham Festival in 2013.
Callow, an associate of Knott from the cattle trade, was also banned for three years.
“The behaviour of Mr Knott and Mr Callow undermines the confidence punters should be able to enjoy backing horses,” the panel said in its report. “The fact that this corrupt behaviour only involved one race is not an ameliorating factor. No credit can be derived from it.”
Sedgefield racecourse has been fined £5,000 following an incident on 27 November when a race at the track was declared void after a track official mistakenly waved a flag instructing the jockeys to pull up. The riders involved ignored the flag, and were all subsequently banned for 10 days for failing to pull up after being instructed to do so.
Nick Rust, the new chief executive of the British Horseracing Authority, will start work at High Holborn on 12 January, with Paul Bittar, the current chief executive, leaving the Authority a week later, the BHA said on Thursday. Rust had been expected to work out a notice period at his current employer, the bookmaker Ladbrokes, until as late as mid-March.