UK Horse Racing Tips

The so-called Flockton Grey Affair was a notorious racing scandal, in which a modestly-bred, unraced two-year-old, trained by an unfashionable trainer, was replaced by an experienced three-year-old in the Knighton Auction Stakes at Leicester on March 29, 1982. Pre-internet age, and long before todays top online casino betting environment. The horse purporting to be Flockton Grey was, in fact, Good Hand, who had been claimed on behalf of the owner of Flockton Grey, Ken Richardson, after a series of decent performances for Nigel Tinkler the previous season.

Unsurprisingly, Good Hand won easily, in fact, by an extraordinary twenty lengths, at odds of 10/1 and, in so doing, landed bets reportedly worth £200,000 placed all over Yorkshire. In this day and age we’d no doubt be taking that money to new casinos. However, bookmakers refused to pay out and the Jockey Club launched an investigation. A visit to winning trainer Stephen Wiles at Langley Holmes Stables in Flockton, West Yorkshire revealed a two-year-old with the same pedigree as Flockton Grey, but missing a conspicuous scar on its left fore, as described in his equine passport. Meanwhile, the Jockey Club examined blown-up photographs taken, purely by chance, by the official racecourse photographer, of the Leicester winner with his mouth open. They concluded that the horse was, unquestionably, a three-year-old and, after an exhaustive search of naming documentation, identified Good Hand.

Richardson was subsequently charged with conspiracy to defraud bookmakers and appeared, with co-defendants Colin Mathison and Peter Boddy, at York Crown Court in May, 1984. All three were found guilty, by majority decision, and Richardson was given a nine-month prison sentence and fined £20,000, plus costs. Two years later, his appeal was rejected and he was ‘warned off’ by the Jockey Club. For his part, Stephen Wiles also appeared before the Jockey Club Disciplinary Committee and had his licence revoked for five years.

Ironically, the horse at the centre of the Flockton Grey Affair never raced. He was kept in police custody until 1986 and, in 1989, sold to Sharon Dick; he lived at her stables near Worksop, Nottinghamshire until his death, from a heart attack, in November, 2008, at the age of 29.

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