Why always Sandown? The history of drama at a track that keeps being let down

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If ever a racecourse deserved a change of luck, it's Sandown, which stages excellent, competitive action all year round. The viewing is great, the layout is compact and it's just an all-round pleasant place to spend your day.

The Front Runner has long reckoned it's the best track for introducing someone new to racing. And yet 'stuff' just seems to happen there, notably, in recent years, in the area of photo-finishes.

July 2018

"My initial reaction was that Rio Ronaldo had held on but Sandown Park, particularly on the sprint course, is a notoriously deceptive angle..." said a prescient Nick Luck after they crossed the line for the sprint handicap that opened the Eclipse meeting.

Moments later, Rio Ronaldo was called the winner by judge Felix Wheeler, some 70 seconds after the finish. Not long after that came official word that, actually, the bobbing head of Vibrant Chords had won the day. It was human error on Wheeler's part and ended his time as a judge, but the BHA claimed the incident was a success for their new verification system, which caught the mistake before 'weighed in' was announced.

Even so, Barry Dennis said he had paid out nearly £2,000 to racecourse punters on the wrong winner. "We don't expect them to tell us five minutes later that there's a different result. It's never happened in my 60 years of being on course," he told The Sun.

March 2019

Another tough day for Barry Dennis, who strode from the betting ring to the stewards' room to tell officials: "You couldn't run a piss-up in a brewery!" He reported his loss this time at £10,000, One For Rosie having been called the winner of a handicap hurdle on Imperial Cup day and then dropped into second place when stewards realised Third Wind had actually won.

The problem was that the photo-finish camera had been focused on the winning post for steeplechase races, which One For Rosie reached first, rather than the one for hurdle races, by which stage Third Wind was in front. There was considerable delay this time and Nigel Twiston-Davies had spoken at length to reporters before it became clear that his horse had been beaten.

Changes were announced the following month to make it more obvious which of Sandown's winning posts is in use for each race, along with a second pre-race check to ensure the camera is pointing the right way.

July 2021

And so to this weekend and another problem caused by the same race that tripped up Wheeler in 2018, now moved from Friday to Saturday.

"It is – oh! – very, very close indeed," Luck told viewers before mentioning Hurricane Ivor as the most likely winner. Never mind the photo, judges should be listening to Racing TV.

To his audible surprise, judge Jane Green named Phoenix Star as the winner some 80 seconds after the finish. Five minutes later came a stewards' inquiry to review the photo finish and some 15 minutes after that came the completely unexpected news of a dead-heat.

The mirror image of the photo print suggested Hurricane Ivor had won but officials decided that could not be trusted, as the mirror was found to have been misaligned. The horses could not be split from the main image, so a dead-heat was the only option.

"Why is it always Sandown?" was the cry on social media and presumably in homes and betting shops as well. An answer is not easy to see because responsibility for these issues seems to lie either with the judge, a BHA employee, or with RaceTech, who set up the photo-finish cameras and the mirror among other equipment. The same people employed by the BHA and RaceTech are used all year round at many different tracks but only at Sandown are they averaging one high-profile howler per year – with other long-ago examples now surfacing, thanks to the internet.

'I'm sure there will be an appeal' – faulty equipment causes photo-finish drama

Yes, Sandown's two winning posts in jump racing could be described as an accident waiting to happen to someone. But that ought to have been obvious long before 2019 and the back-up check that was brought in after that year's mistake could have been in place a long time before.

The Front Runner still sees Sandown as a well-run track that has been let down by people it doesn't employ. You might conceivably have a reason to criticise if you broadened the conversation to include the void London National of 2019, after which the track's executives decided to deploy more stop-race flags around its circuit.

Magical thinking must, of course, be resisted at all times but you could be forgiven for thinking some unseen force was determined to make mischief in Esher. Kieren Fox was unseated because a golf ball, kicked up by a horse in front of him, caused his mount to shy. Ryan Moore was unseated because his horse took a sharp turn to the left.

Barry Geraghty was denied a certain winner when his mount also took a sharp left and essentially stopped competing when six lengths clear on the run-in. Sandown's biggest race, now known as the bet365 Gold Cup, has had four disqualified winners.

Maybe it's just horse racing's version of the Bermuda Triangle, where weird things happen and no official emerges unscathed. We all enjoy a bit of drama and at Sandown there is no shortage.

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The Front Runner is our latest email newsletter available exclusively to Members' Club Ultimate subscribers. Chris Cook, a three-time Racing Reporter of the Year award winner, provides his take on the day's biggest stories and tips for the upcoming racing every morning from Monday to Friday