We will appeal, vows Beckett
ANGRY trainer Ralph Beckett has vowed to launch an appeal after heartbreak in yesterday’s Ladbrokes St Leger with filly Simple Verse controversially disqualified.
Beckett’s 8-1 shot passed the post a head in front of Aidan O’Brien’s 2-1 favourite Bondi Beach but, after a 15-minute enquiry, Doncaster stewards reversed the placings and promoted Colm O’Donoghue’s mount.
The stewards judged Simple Verse’s jockey Andrea Atzeni guilty of careless riding as he switched his mount off the running rail to launch a challenge two furlongs out. They decided two separate contacts had been decisive.
Atzeni, who picked up a three-day careless riding ban, won the following race on the Doncaster card on board Captain Morley. ‘Deep down, I feel low,’ he said. ‘I felt like going home. I was crying in the stalls. I did not think I was going to lose it.
‘I gave the eventual winner a little bump but he was leaning on me as much as I was leaning on him — if he was good enough he would have got by me.’ Beckett, who believed he had landed his first St Leger, said: ‘I’m astonished. We lose the race when clearly both horses leaned on each other.
‘Can you honestly say that it was entirely her fault? One thing is for certain, we will appeal this.’
It is hard to be definite that Simple Verse improved her position by her actions under Atzeni, as the rules state she must have to be disqualified.
But O’Donoghue, after recording his first Leger win and O’Brien’s fifth, said: ‘Andrea has come off his inside line and knocked me three or four wide. You could see my horse changing his legs and he has lost his momentum.’
Beckett had looked like he was going to be rewarded for the brave call of advising owner Sheik Fahad Al Thani to pay the £50,000 supplementary entry fee on Monday by securing the £310,000 first prize.
The drama was almost repeated at Leopardstown when Golden Horn, under Frankie Dettori, lurched violently right and bumped into ultimate third Free Eagle before winning the Irish Champion Stakes by a length from Found. But, in this instance, the stewards let the result stand.