BRITISH police arrested 16 people including three jockeys and a trainer yesterday as part of a major crackdown on corruption in horse racing. The operation, involving 130 police officers across the country, is the latest in a series of probes which have tarnished the image of a sport enjoyed by millions of people across Britain including the Queen and the royal family.

“Of the people we have arrested, three are jockeys and one is a horse trainer,” said Detective Chief Superintendent Steve Wilmott, leading the operation. “We have amassed a large amount of information, including computer records and documentation seized today, and will now commence the detailed task of examining it all.”

“This case is of great national significance,” he said, adding that the operation concerned “corruption within horse racing and fixing the outcome of horse races”. Those arrested were being held in the eastern county of Suffolk, in Hertfordshire, near London, and in the two northern counties of North and South Yorkshire. The raids will rekindle memories of horse racing’s “annus horribilis” of 2002, when two BBC television documentaries and collateral damage from a series of court cases rocked the sport and resulted in long bans for former jockeys Graham Bradley and Dermot Browne.

Bradley, who won the 1983 Cheltenham Gold Cup, was barred for eight years, later reduced to five, on charges that included passing on privileged information for monetary reward. In addition, one well-known figure in the horse racing world was caught with a hidden television camera, another failed a dope test for cocaine and another was jailed for six months for indecently assaulting a woman flight attendant. John Blake, chief executive of the Jockeys’ Association, said Wednesday’s arrests were worrying but not unprecedented. “We had dawn raids (in the past) where there were race-fixing allegations and jockeys and trainers arrested and licences of those persons taken away, but no evidence was found and the licences were actually returned,” he told BBC Radio.

“So it’s not a new phenomenon in racing, although racing has certainly changed in terms of the betting landscape in the last few years and certainly these are serious issues.”

<B>Gideon Long</B>