Communications black hole prompts regulator to bring public in from the dark

In the coming days the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board is expected to appoint an experienced racing journalist as its communications manager.

It is an area in which the regulator has long been lamentably inept, with the dearth of information scaling an inglorious peak following the episode in which Paul Townend steered Al Boum Photo around the final fence in the Growise Champion Chase at last year’s Punchestown festival.

In the black hole from where an explanation might have been expected to emerge, conspiracy theories abounded, which is invariably what happens when the authorities elect to treat the race-going public and punters like mushrooms, keeping them in the dark and plied with horse manure. Since then, there has been a grudging acceptance at board level within the IHRB that the issue needed to be addressed.