Chris Waller is the master of manipulating handicap weights.
Winxy’s method is simple, and he has been doing it forever.
He enters one of his top rated horses in a handicap race where it is certain to get the top weight, but in which he has no intention of running it, the purpose being to lighten the weights given to it’s stablemate or mates who will actually run, and will be advantaged by the corrupted scale.
Waller did it just last week in the Newmarket where he nominated and second accepted with Nature Strip, even though it was never, ever his intention to run the champion sprinter in the race.
What Winxy was doing was deliberately manipulating the handicaps to bring his real runner Home Affairs into the race light.
Nature Strip is Australia’s best sprinter, and along with Eduardo is rated in the top ten in the world.
Eduardo wasn’t entered for the Newmarket, so Waller knew that on Timeform ratings Nature Strip would get three kilos more than any other horse in the race, which his handicap of 59.5kg he did.
That meant that with a minimum handicap of 50kg the weights for every horse would be compressed.
Every other horse including his star three-year-old Home Affairs.
Had Nature Strip not been entered in the race and kept there until final acceptances the topweight would have been Masked Crusader on 58 kilograms, which meant that Home Affairs on his record would have been handicapped at 57.5kg, which is7.5kg above the minimum.
The last three-year-old to carry that much above the bottom was Placid Ark 35 years ago, and as good as he might be Home Affairs is not as good as that great WA sprinter, and isn’t racing in steroids like he was either.
Racing is a game of weights and measures.
Winxy had to act.
So he slipped Nature Strip in and Home Affairs snuck into the race with 55.5kg, two kilos lighter than it would have received if its stablemate hadn’t been there.
When the Strip came out, Masked Crusader became the highest weighted runner in the race, and had his handicap lifted a half kilo to meet the minimum top weight of 57kg, with all other runners weights being lifted by a half kilo too.
Bingo.
That meant that Home Affairs carried 56kg, one and a half under what it would have if Winxy hadn’t pulled the stooge.
Waller has done exactly the same thing in the Sydney Cup.
He has nominated the champion Verry Ellegant for the race, even though the whole world knows that the great mare won’t be running, because her Autumn Carnival target is the Group 1 Queen Elizabeth Stakes run at WFA and worth twice as much on the same card.
It’s a blatant manipulation of the handicaps for the Cup, and an absolute rort, a ruse deliberately designed to get Waller’s real runners into the race carrying at least two kilos less than they otherwise would.
Once again it has worked too.
Winxy’s highest weighted entrants outside of Verry Ellegant are Great House, Ocean Billy and Selino on 53kg.
Selino and Ocean Billy both carried a half kilo more in last year’s Melbourne Cup, and running a line through the 2nd highest weighted horse Spanish Mission – who carried 57kg in the Cup and has 58.5kg here, but would have had 60kg if Verry Ellegant wasn’t there – they both should be carrying 55kg here.
But they are not, and if Spanish Mission runs – which unless P. Moody reckons he is a hope at WFA against the mare he will – their weights will stay there.
If Moody goes the WFA QEII route then The Chosen One – who has 56kg – will become the topweight, and the weights will rise by 1kg to meet the mandated 57kg minimum for Group 1 races, but it won’t matter because all the other weights, including the minimums, will rise by a kilogram too.
That hugely advantages Waller’s other half a dozen entrants for the race that have been weighted down on or just above the minimum as a consequence of the compression of the scale due to Verry Ellegant’s entry, for he has two in that are benchmarked at 100 ratings handicapped at just 1.0kg above the minimum, and a bunch of others with ratings between 76 and 93 who thanks to his clever but utterly dishonest manipulation of the handicaps will continue to carry just the minimum.
It is flagrant cheating, for if the handicaps were re-done with the Melbourne Cup winner out, all of Waller’s entrants would rise significantly in weight to place them in relativity to the group of lesser 60 something rated entrants at the bottom of the scale. But it will not happen, because once the weights are set the rule is that if one runner’s impost is increased to meet the minimum topweight, then every runner’s weight goes up by the same amount of kilograms.
You might think Winxy Waller is being super clever doing what he doing, and maybe he is in one sense.
But the truth is that he is really doing is wilfully and intentionally breaking the rules.
Rule AR.229 to be precise.
It reads like this:
AR 229 Corruption, dishonesty and misleading behaviour
(1) A person must not:
(a) engage in any dishonest, corrupt, fraudulent, improper or dishonourable action or practice in connection with racing;
(b) engage in conduct that corrupts the outcome of a race or is intended to corrupt the outcome of a race, where:
(i) conduct “corrupts the outcome of a race” if it:
(A) affects or, if engaged in, would be likely to affect the outcome of any race; and
(B) is contrary to the standards of integrity that a reasonable person would expect of persons in a position to affect the outcome of a race
Manipulating the weight scale by deliberately entering horses for races that you have no intention of running them in is dishonest, fraudulent, misleading and corrupt conduct.
Viewing the practice from an honest prism, it cannot possibly be construed in any other way.
Chris Waller’s scheming is also clearly conduct that is intended to corrupt the outcome of a race.
We all know that weights are critical determinants of a horse’s chances to win a race. If they weren’t, then we wouldn’t bother with handicaps, and winners wouldn’t be disqualified when their jockey weighs in light.
So manipulating the scale by slipping your best horse into a race that you know it is not going to run in, and doing so for the purpose of advantaging other horses you train by gaining them a lighter handicap – an outcome that will certainly improve their chances of winning – must by any reasonable assessment be viewed as trying to corrupt the outcome of that race.
Waller’s strategic practice of doing so, and his conduct in the execution, is clearly contrary to the standards of integrity that a reasonable person would expect of any trainer in a position to do such a dishonest thing, in particular NSW’s leading trainer.
What Winxy is doing is wrong, and must be stopped.
The only way to stop him doing it for the Stewards in Victoria and NSW to charge him with a breach or breaches of rule AR.229, and throw the kitchen sink at him when he is found guilty.
There is a simple way of proving his guilt too.
Get a lie detector and put Waller on it, and ask him one simple question, this one:
“Mr Waller, did you ever intend to run Verry Ellegant in the Sydney Cup?”
We all know what the answer will be.
This is not a victimless rule breach, and it is not clever.
A whole host of owners and trainers are being hurt by Waller’s deceptive conduct, and are being denied the chance to have their horse run carrying the weight it should.
I don’t care who Chris Waller is.
It’s high time that he is called to account.
You can view the Sydney Cup weights and see how Waller is cheating here https://racing.racingnsw.com.au/FreeFields/Weights.aspx?Key=2022Apr09,NSW,Royal%20Randwick