Unsatisfactory and Incompetent Mean the Same Thing
By Sharan Kumar
Indian racing has a curious way of punishing offences.
Not by what actually happened on the track, but by how imaginatively the Stipes/Stewards
choose their words after the event. The recent suspensions arising from the
rides on Bezalel and Fynbos offer a masterclass in how vocabulary
can be stretched, twisted and finally detached from logic, all while
maintaining a straight face.
At the heart of both enquiries lies the same
uncomfortable conclusion. In both races, the Stewards were convinced that the
horse in question was capable of winning. In both cases, they explicitly
stopped short of accusing the jockey of preventing the horse from running on
its merit. And yet, in both instances, the jockey was punished because the ride
was deemed to have cost the horse the race. That shared reality should have led
to similar findings and comparable punishments. Instead, we were served two different
labels and two wildly different suspensions, as though semantics rather than
substance were on trial.
In the Bezalel case, the Stewards bent over backwards
to reassure the racing public that nothing improper had occurred. The horse
hung, then straightened. The excuse was examined, rejected and declared
immaterial. The jockey was not accused of deliberately restraining the horse or
riding to any questionable intent. He was merely found guilty of
“unsatisfactory riding”, a phrase that suggests disappointment rather than
delinquency. Yet this mild-sounding offence attracted a suspension of twelve
race days and a hefty fine, a punishment usually reserved for conduct bordering
on the unforgivable. One is left wondering how a ride that did not stop a horse
from running on merit managed to stop the jockey from riding for nearly two and
half months.
Contrast this with the Fynbos enquiry, where the
Stewards showed rare bluntness. The jockey sat in the wrong position, failed to
improve when he should have, and lacked vigour at a crucial stage. The horse,
we are told, was placed at a disadvantage. This was not a matter of finesse or
timing. It was labelled, without hesitation, as “incompetent riding”. In plain
English, incompetence implies a lack of ability to perform the task at hand. In
most professions, that is considered more serious than merely doing a job
unsatisfactorily. Yet here, the punishment amounted to four race days and a
fine that looked more like a mild rebuke than a deterrent.
This is where the logic quietly collapses. If
unsatisfactory riding and incompetent riding both result in a horse losing a
race it was capable of winning, and if neither involves stopping the horse from
running on merit, then what exactly is being distinguished? The answer, it
appears, lies not in the action but in the perception. Unsatisfactory riding
seems to mean that the jockey knew what to do and failed to do it to the
Stewards’ liking. Incompetent riding, on the other hand, suggests that the
jockey did not quite know what to do in the first place. In the curious moral
universe of racing discipline, ignorance attracts sympathy while disappointment
invites wrath.
The irony is delicious. The jockey accused of
incompetence is effectively told that his ride fell below basic professional
standards, yet he is handed a suspension short enough to be treated as an
inconvenience. The jockey accused of being unsatisfactory is told that he did
not cheat, did not stop the horse, and did not act with improper intent, yet he
is punished as though he had committed a far griding offence. The words suggest
different crimes, but the reasoning reveals the same belief: the jockey was at
fault for the defeat.
What these two orders ultimately expose is not a
difference in culpability, but a confusion in language. By carefully avoiding
the charge of preventing a horse from running on its merit, the Stewards appear
to be punishing outcomes through technical side doors. One rider is penalised
for not riding vigorously enough to satisfy expectations, the other for lacking
the competence to do so at all. The end result, however, is identical. A
winnable race was lost due to the jockey’s actions.
When words like “unsatisfactory” and “incompetent” are
used interchangeably in effect but not in punishment, they lose their meaning.
The sport is left with suspensions that look arbitrary, fines that feel
symbolic, and orders that raise more questions than they answer. In trying so
hard to be precise with terminology, the authorities have ended up being
imprecise with justice.
In racing, as on the track, consistency matters. If a
horse is deemed good enough to win and loses because of the rider, then the
offence should be defined clearly and punished proportionately. Until then, we
will continue to watch riders punished not for what they did, but for how
unsatisfactorily or incompetently the Stewards choose to describe it.
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