Seamus Heffernan

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Crazy ban on a pig of a horse...have seen far far worse cases day in day out in Ireland.....including horses from Ballydoyle.

Annoyed Heffernan hits out at Gowran stewards

DUAL Irish Derby-winning jockey Seamie Heffernan hit out at the Gowran Park stewards after they handed him a four-day ban for riding an injudicious race on Drumbeat, who finished second to stablemate Hail Caeser in controversial circumstances in the feature at Gowran Park on Friday evening.
Heffernan sat out the back while his stable companion opened up a clear lead, but the controversy arose when Heffernan deliberately covered his mount up behind two chasing horses until a furlong out. The winner was not stopping and by the time Drumbeat was pulled out for a run it was too late.
The rider maintained he was riding to instructions on an ungenuine horse, and had he pulled out earlier he would not have won and would not even have finished second.
The stewards accepted that he had ridden to instructions, but still found him guilty of having ridden injudiciously and suspended him for four days and also ordered him to forfeit his riding fee.
Heffernan was not shy in voicing his displeasure at the verdict. He said: “I think it’s ridiculous what the stewards did. I got four days for a ride on a very ungenuine horse that has to be ridden from the back and that can’t get to the front. It was a small field and the leader got away. I thought it was ridiculous, if I followed the winner I wouldn’t have even been second. I think it’s a joke what they did and I’m very annoyed with the stewards.
"They don’t know the horse, I do. I spoke to Aidan and he’s very annoyed as well. If I didn’t ride to instructions then my rides would dry up very quickly. And then all these punters ringing up At The Races, I don’t ride for punters, I ride for Aidan O’Brien. I think the punters ringing At The Races have more control of racing than anybody else.”
 
Actually, crazy is probably a slight exageration as looking at it first time it does look pretty bad.

But the horse (as I said on here earlier in the season) is an absolute pig of a horse and the jockey was clearly hoping to get as much cover as possible hoping the eventual third and fourth would lead him to throw down a challenge to the eventual winner. When he did pull him out to close on him, the response was pretty limited with his head reaching for the sky.

Look what he did when he was pulled out for a clear run in the Irish 2000 Guineas. From hack cantering up to the leaders a furlong and a half out he absolutely spat the dumming out and said enough is enough.
 
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He may be a pig but he did not TRY to obtain the best position he could. I recall a race in Leopardstown where the jocks in a small field let one go a furlong clear and they pleaded that they were all riding hold up horses but all got banned anyway. And it was the right decision. If Heffernan insists on riding to instructions rather than adapting to the race then so be it, he shall accept the consequences, just as Murtagh received the wrath of punters after Frozen Fire at Chester. I recall the jock of the winner at Chester said his instructions were to hold his mount up but no pace was no good for him so he went on......and won!

While I agree the horse is a pg, the ride was a porker too.

PS The winner isn't exactly the most genuine either and had his head up in the air too
 
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I think he probably would not have come second or third if he went after the leader earlier. I have seen far worse cases, including horses from Ballydoyle, go unchecked in the past.
 
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But if he went earlier and you think he would have possibly finished secodn anyway, isn't it better to have tried and failed than not try at all.

Heffernan has been caught in non-trier events before (the famous Bolger one in Naas) and he does create his own problems. He is better off taking this one on the chin and stop moaning.
 
Yeah bless their poor souls for having the courage to ban someone for not trying. Now if only they moved to a few of those trainers!!
 
Doesn't make pleasing viewing, but given Drumbeat has proved himself a thoroughly ungenuine, unlikeable horse, a rather strange decision.

In the bigger picture, I wonder does this signal a sea change in terms of Irish stewarding?
 
But should he be made to lose his fee? He's paid to ride a horse, and he rode it to the instructions of the trainer, and bore in mind that the horse is (I'll take Gal's word as I've no idea) ungenuine when pushed. Okay, get a ban, which denies him being able to work for a short while, but why should he be denied a fee? If a doctor turns up for work and makes a Horlicks of a procedure, he may later be fined by a tribunal, but he still gets paid for the day he worked. I'm not sure anyone has the right to deny a person their rightful pay for a job done.
 
It was an appalling ride, however tricky the horse is. If Aidan O'Brien is upset at the decision as reported, then I've lost a degree of respect for him. If he formally expressed himself satisfied with the ride then there would be an argument for punishing him, rather than Heffernan. The winner was ridden to win, whereas Drumbeat could not conceivably have won the way he was ridden. For those who haven't seen it he was held up behind horses and asked for an effort 150 yards out, with the leader 5 lengths clear. In Hong Kong both trainer and jockey would have been warned off.
 
I have been following Drumbeat closely since he did me a right favour when getting chinned in a Roscommon maiden.When I saw the entries for this race last night and thought there was a possibility that I would be able to lay him at something close to evens I thought it was my birthday.
I laid Drumbeat for enough to have a very shakey hand watching the race.In my opinion Drubeat would have found a way to get beaten no matter what Seamie did.It didn't look good but thats Drumbeat all over -have no doubts he will be regularly beaten over hurdles for years to come.
In the 10 or 11 years I have been involved with various internet racing forums every so often a horse comnes along and people scream cheat.Second Empire,Prokofiev,Opera de Couer etc. etc. -usually in the fullness of time the horse involved is shown to be lacking in some way.
 
So this does lead us to an interesting thought: should proven ungenuine nags be banned, instead of jockeys (riding to instructions or otherwise)? If a horse consistently refuses to put itself into the best possible position to win its race, and earns itself the soubriquet of 'dodgepot', then perhaps the authorities would do well to save punters from a non-trier, and demand it be withdrawn from racing?

Perhaps the same fate should befall horses patently out of love with racing. When a trainer opines that he thinks his horse is out of love with the game, but continues to enter it up to no avail, why not mandate its retirement, thus opening up the race to horses who'd otherwise be ballotted out, and saving punters the thought that "maybe this time... "!
 
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When it ran in the Irish2000 Guineas it looked to be going incredibly well 2 furlongs out and traded fairly short in running on betfair.Unfortunately this was an optical illusion and he faded badly to be well beaten.The horse is a complete dodgepot.
 
However ungenuine that horse is, heffernan gave him no chance of winning.
Funny time for the stewards to make a stand, i've seen worse.
I don't think Hail Ceasar is ungenuine at all he just has limited ability.
 
No matter how tricky the horse is, Heffernan made no effort at all to move into a position where he could win the race, sitting and suffering as he was trapped when he had the option of moving wide clearly wasn't acceptable.

Just because they have got away with using the track as a schooling ground in the past, Psalm and Golden Sword just 2 of the worst examples, you could throw Magna Cum Laude in there as well, it doesn't mean that the stewards shouldn't feel as though they can act when they deem it necessary.
 
There are cleary two issues here.

(1) If given the perfect ride, would Drumbeat have won?
(2) Was Drumbeat given the perfect ride or anytghing near it.

Thery are not related questions. In answering (1), I'm not sure Drumbeat would have won if he was beside Hail Cesar a furlong out as the lads say, he is ungenuine. On (2) the answer has to be no as if he was genuine he woould still not have picked up Hail Ceasr from where he was a furlong out. He was five lengths down with 200 yards to go. So very far from the perfect ride, even if the horse was genuine.

For the perfect ride last night, Smullen was brilliant on Captain Henry and Kinane gave Eytrana a clever ride in the last.
 
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I watched the replay this morning and, unless I'd heard otherwise, I wouldn't have thought that such a bad ride at all. Really - HAIL CAESAR's gone off like a bolted rabbit, so nobody would reasonably think of trying to catch and keep up with him (and nobody did). A furlong out, Heffernan stops trailing the two in front, pops DRUMBEAT out (still carrying his head high, as if he's being jarred or is having breathing problems - presumably neither being the case), and rows away like an Oxford blue. But you have to be honest about this, surely, and say that unless he'd gone upsides HAIL CAESAR from the off, he was never going to do better than 2nd place, anyway? Four days off and lose your fee? That seems bizarre to me, seeing the way the whole race was run. Nobody else is taking on HC, so why penalize the one bloke who did?
 
I think the stewards and most people believe he didn't try and take on Hail Caesar.He just went through the motions. Having ridden HC 4 times on course and god knows how many times on the gallops you would expect Hefferenan to Know what HC is capable of even if he couldn't see what was happening in front of him during the race.
 
Thanks for that, Sheikh - if HC has a habit of fast front-running, then yes, presumably Heffernan would assume that that's how he'd go off in this race. But, then, why was he advised to ignore this feature of the horse's running and to hold up his DRUMBEAT? If AOB was aware of HC's characteristics, he was really countering the jockey's own knowledge of the horse, wasn't he? There are, after all, two people involved with any horse's running: its trainer, and its jockey. For all we know, Heffernan may well have said to the Greatest Trainer, "But, sir, you know HC loves to go off like a firecracker in front," and been told never mind, leave him be and produce DRUMBEAT late... which is exactly what he did! And he gets clobbered for that? So there were two people involved in not trying to secure the best possible position for DRUMBEAT, weren't there?

Going back to the race, though: does anyone seriously think that if Heffernan had laid DRUMBEAT upsides HC, that he could've beaten him? Does it honestly then matter, if the answer's 'no', whether he lost by a 6l or 2l? Cosmetically it's more appealing, but realistically the result's the same for punters.
 
krizon said:
Going back to the race, though: does anyone seriously think that if Heffernan had laid DRUMBEAT upsides HC, that he could've beaten him? Does it honestly then matter, if the answer's 'no', whether he lost by a 6l or 2l? Cosmetically it's more appealing, but realistically the result's the same for punters.
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I think the majority of punters and on course bookmakers thought so, given their respective prices. Hail Caesar isn't an unstoppable win machine. It's also not the point whether Drumbeat should have won (I'd happily be a layer of such horses in general) but whether he was given a chance to do so. The fact is that he was travelling on the bridle through the race but was only sent after the leader when the race was all over. Whatever his instructions were, that was desperately poor judgement at best.
 
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Sheikh said:
However ungenuine that horse is, heffernan gave him no chance of winning.
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In terms of winning the race, I think he put the horse in the only position to give him a chance of winning...that by sticking himself back in behind the eventual third and fourth, they would bring him to Hail Caesar to mount a challenge. He is never the type of horse to try and single handedly close down on a run away leader...he just does not have the temperment for it.

If he went after him from the turn in I think he would have been beaten further and probably lost his runner up spot.

The likes of Drumbeat and a few others are likely to be sold off in the new future, getting a win into him would be pretty desireable given the numbers of decent placed efforts he has.
 
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