After watching today’s 5f sprint at Kempton I cannot believe that the stewards did not throw out the winner Prime Recreation, R Winston’s failure to keep to his draw resulted in him gaining a significant advantage over his rivals

Anyone who knows anything about racing would know that in a sprint, the start is crucial to a horses success or failure and it seems to me the stewards completely miss this, it is very hard for a sprinter to recover from a bad start and even harder when you have to restrain your horse after kicking it out of the gate due to interference

Winston in my view, gained, improved his position via his manoeuvre while interfering with the momentum of his competitors and should have been throw out, in the same way he would have been thrown out if he had chopped off those very same horses 100 yards from the winning post

Personally I would like to see the rules on interference brought into line with the American and Australia model, where any interference, no matter in what part of the race it takes place results in the offender being disqualified or demoted

Rant over, thoughts?

I agree inasmuch as that any jockey who does not ride to his draw (unless he drops his charge out competely and goes behind everything) should be penalised irrespective of interference. Is that still the way in France (irrespective of distance, you ride to your draw for a furlong or so)?

I see that as a commonsense "one-size-fits-all" approach. The premise there is that the jockey here currently may or may not get away with it (depending on events around him) whereas under that method, he's going to be fined at least for doing in whether he interferes or not.

It also takes any stewarding inconsistency out of the equation - the evidence is there on VT. Racing's equivalent of the on-the-spot fine?

May be gubbins - not sure if I've fully thought it through (you might end up with horses in the river at Chester...) :P .