I was talking to mate over email tonight and the subject of Shane Loone came up.
For those not familiar with the name or the sport, Loone is a lifelong cheat who is afflicted by a rapacious form of cancer, and is unlikely to see ID25. It hasn’t slowed him down though, for over the past 12 months he’s been involved in more rule breaches and rorts than Peter Foster. Ring-ins, race fixes, boaties, needles, drenches, bleeder shots, dope, pull-up jobs – you name it, Loone’s did it last year.
The SA Stewards – at least one of whom is his is long-time mate from his own training and driving days – have gone incredibly soft on Loone, giving him slaps on the wrist with a wet bus ticket for offences that would see anyone else out spelling for years. They have obviously done so because he’s sick.
Is that right or is that wrong?
That is a matter of opinion.
Here’s mine, as written to my mate.
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I hear that just today Shane Loone’s returned a positive to COVID-19.
As most in the industry know he’s suffering from late stage terminal cancer and not travelling real well, although we are all racing people so until there aren’t any more the next day it’s a matter of never say die and on that front I wish him well.
This bloody new disease isn’t going to help his cause though the poor bugger. These idiots who run racing all around the country need to have a good hard look at themselves about how they have managed the virus since the borders opened, or more correctly how they haven’t. I know it’s primarily the Government’s fault, but by covering up outbreaks at the trots gee the racing authorities have put a lot of people at risk.
Back to Shane Loone specifically, and it’s as clear as the nose on your face that the Stewards are going soft on him because of the cancer.
Should they or shouldn’t they?
It’s one of those ethical dilemmas like the puzzle that your primary school teacher used to ask you about the plane that’s about to crash. Remember that one? It’s going down because it is too heavy, and you have to decide which person are you going to throw out. Who do you choose – the doctor, the retired granny, the little kid, the bank robber being extradited, the copper taking him, the pilot, the man who has six weeks to live, the refugee being deported back to where they came from, the politician, or Alan Joyce?
It’s a damn tough choice isn’t it?
It’s the same with the Stewards and Shane Loone. If a crooks got near final stage cancer, then what comes first, being a compassionate human being or calling him out as the crook that he is and punishing him the way he should be punished under the rules? He’s already being punished much worse isn’t he? Do we need to add to his troubles?
I’m buggered if I know the answer. I’d like to say that we should throw the book at him, but racing is only a sport, and life is life. Human compassion tells me go easy, because the trots are the bloke’s life, and probably what’s keeping him going, and who are we are we to take that away from him?
But then on the other hand, harness racing is a lot of peoples lives, mine to a degree included. Does anyone, sick or well, have the right to take that away from us, or despoil this thing we love? Does Shane Loone really give a rats arse about anyone else? About the old, sick straight guy who is trying to win one more race before he goes, or the lonely old widower whose wife and kids died in a car crash whose only joy now is the trots? I doubt it. So why should we care about him?
I have no answer to any of this, I’m just talking out loud.
At the end of the day it’s something that we all need to make our own minds about, and do so in a way that we can live with ourselves.
Sometimes I would just hate to be a Steward.