famous case in one of the longer races in the 80s well before betfair..heavily backed  fav mysteriously tailed off.

playschool

The champion hurdle has been a good race for stopped favourites , I can think of three straight away

Not that the one in question was stopped as such. Just should never have run.

sfbtw

like rubmyback...only different?

Yes minimum 3 jimnast , could be more that I’m not aware of

are you including istabraq and brownes gazzette robo ?

no worries robo out of interest with sweet fa else to do i will have a look back ,thanks for the decade.

screaming from beneaththewaves will be upset but reproduced below is a just published RP article from Lee Mottershead which touches on the subject of the Viking Hoard scandal:

Ignorance isn't bliss - and Viking Hoard shows we can bury our heads no longer

There has been a common refrain these last few days. Questions, questions, questions. In a week of so many stories, there have remained so many questions but also so very few answers.

Sometimes it requires considerable bravery to ask a question, let alone to provide the right response.

David Mullins displayed such courage when asking himself if he really wanted to carry on as a jockey. It was plainly the right thing to do, for although a superb rider, he was a rider whose heart, by his own admission, was no longer in the job. To have the chance of starting a new life at 24 with a Grand National winner's trophy in your possession is a marvellous thing indeed.

Also to be welcomed was Ascot's announcement that the royal meeting will now have seven races each afternoon following the permanent introduction of five extra contests, including four of those brought in as a temporary measure last year. The fact it was at that stage stressed the contests were one-off additions underlines how big a deal this was deemed to be, yet given how competitive the new (or revived in the case of the Buckingham Palace) handicaps were, one wonders why the idea of running a seven-race card was ever seen as such sacrilege.

The team at BBC South News really should have asked a few basic questions before inaccurately reporting that Newbury racecourse had halted its Covid-19 vaccination process "to allow horseracing to go ahead". We can rightly bemoan that particular external media intrusion into the racing parish. It is far harder to complain about the decision of investigative journalists David Walsh and Paul Kimmage to begin looking at the sport's integrity in Ireland.

They were already interested – fuelled by intriguing comments made last year by Jim Bolger – even before news broke of the Viking Hoard doping and race-fixing scandal that resulted in trainer Charles Byrnes being banned for six months.

It must be stressed it was not established that Byrnes was connected to either the doping of the horse or any betting exchange lay wagers on the Tramore contest. What that in turn means is nobody has been identified – and therefore nobody has been held to account – for the actual doping, a crime that put multiple lives at risk. Given that crime seemingly took place on racecourse property and now well over two years ago, the failure of justice to be done is a matter for the most enormous regret.

It is not necessarily a surprise, for numerous crimes go unsolved. What in this case borders on the unforgivable is the absence of CCTV in the stable yard that must have made it immeasurably easier than it should have been for the unknown miscreant to nobble Viking Hoard. Past lessons have evidently not been learned by the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board. Worryingly, we can have no confidence they will be learned.

The BHA's manual for courses has long since stressed the need for all racecourse stables to have "a digital colour CCTV system", the document stating clearly: "A key consideration when considering layout is the requirement to provide the BHA Integrity Services & Licensing Department with good and clear CCTV coverage of the entire yard, including the main entrance and emergency exits."

Leopardstown remains the only racecourse in Ireland that would meet the licensing standards enforced in Britain. The IHRB has pointed out some other tracks have CCTV systems in stable yards for "property security reasons". That may potentially prevent the theft of somebody's packed lunch. It will likely not prevent a major security breach. As Walsh has quite correctly pointed out, it seems inconceivable €81.2 million was spent on the Curragh redevelopment without a fit-for-purpose CCTV system being installed.

Also hard to understand is why regulators and participants in so many jurisdictions, Ireland included, continue to turn what looks like a blind eye to Phoenix Thoroughbreds.
My colleague Peter Scargill this week revealed the UAE has become the third major racing nation to put a block on entries being made for Phoenix-owned horses, thus following the lead taken by the BHA and France Galop. This was a positive development.

That is not to say Phoenix or its founder Amer Abdulaziz have broken any laws. It is the case, however, that Phoenix has refused multiple requests from the Racing Post to name any of the 50 investors Abdulaziz referred to in June 2019.

Given the seriousness of the money laundering allegations made against Abdulaziz in a New York court – all of which have been strenuously denied – one would assume any regulator that allows Phoenix to operate, and any trainer, breeder or sales company that accepts Phoenix business, must surely have received clear information regarding the identity of those investors. If they have not, why not?

With avenues to Phoenix closed off in Britain, France and now reportedly the UAE, Australia has increasingly become its favoured home, as was made more obvious earlier this month when the organisation spent large sums of money at the Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale. Once again, one hopes those in receipt of that money were minded to ask questions and get answers.

The thing about questions, however, is they are best not asked if you would perhaps rather not know the answers. That suggests ignorance is bliss. When a sport's integrity is at stake, we should view ignorance as an enemy.

Wasn't Godolphin's "wintering in Dubai" held to be a failure? Steroids or not, they seemed to underperform when returning to Newmarket's wintry air. At least, that is my recollection.