I wrote earlier this week about the tantalising future clash of the three great 5-year-old pacing titans, Ride High, Self Assured and Lochinvar Art.
There was something I did’t tell you.
Lochinvar Art will be racing for a new stable.
His trainer/driver David Moran (pictured at top) is about to be disqualified from the sport for upwards of three years.
Why?
Because David Moran is a match fixer.
On the 12th of December last year at Echuca, Moran bet against a horse named Scotlynn Drive that he was steering in race 7.
He bet on the pacer’s stablemate Elmers Hoffing It instead, and backed in various combinations to win plenty.
The trainer of both horses was Amanda Turnbull.
Two years ago she was charged with match fixing alongside her then partner, and now banned for life harness cheat, Nathan Jack and his co-conspirators Mark Pitt and Lisa Bartley.
Turnbull had backed the hot horse winner in the fixed race, and had prior knowledge of the fix.
The criminal charge against her was later dropped, but the stench has never gone away.
Moran hooked Scotlynn Drive the night that he bet against it at Echuca.
He drove it like a maniac in the lowly rating 55-64 event over 2160 metres, coming out from the wide gate so fast, and attacking the leader so hard, that they ran the quickest lead time ever recorded on the Echuca track, a time three-tenths of a second faster than the record holder for the 2160m distance in setting its mark three years before.
David Moran didn’t let up either. He attacked the leader mercilessly throughout the race, ensuring a super fast tempo so that the stablemate Elmer who was sitting pretty in midfield off the pace could burn home around the field and put the tiring leaders to the sword in the straight.
He played his role in the boat race perfectly,but the sting missed.
Elmers Hoofing It’s junior driver James McPherson hesitated at the vital moment he was meant to pull three wide to follow another Turnbull in front of him, Amanda’s younger cousin Abbey on the meant to be stalking horse but accidental winner Letsrockletsroll.
It was only a half second mistake, but it mean that he missed the run he was supposed to take, and Jayden Brewin who was coming from the back on The Hervey Bay grabbed the spot instead and jammed Mcpherson into a zip fastened pocketi which he stayed stuck tight until the turn.
By that time the leaders had kicked away with a winning break and it was too late. Elmers Hoofing It flew home and was a certainty beaten, but beaten he was, and therein lies a salient lesson for police officers and prosecutors trying to prosecute racing conspiracies, Nothing is sure about the result in a sporting race until a horse hits the post in first.
There is something sure about what happened here though.
David Moran bet against his horse and deliberately drove it dead, in a manner designed to set the race up for Turnbull-trained stablemate that he had bet on.
Watch the replay – it’s as clear as day.
My mail is that David Moran’s sentence has been determined, and that any day now it will be announced that he was been disqualified from harness racing for 3 1/2 years, leaving the champion Lochinvar Art without a trainer or a driver, at least until the superstar’s owner Kevin Gordon sends it north to Killer Cross and the Luke McCarthy stable.
The long disqualification and the loss of Lochie must be a devastating blow to David Moran.
But they may just turn out to be the least of his problems.
to be continued …. watch this space
