Talking Horses: Evans and Ladbrokes case will damage horse racing's image | Greg Wood

A word-by-word transcript of the cheery, nudge-nudge conversation between David Evans and a Ladbrokes trader has brought racing into the spotlight

So, how are you feeling as you size up the markets this morning? Confident that the prices on offer are, on the whole, a reasonably assessment of every runner’s chance? Or just a little concerned, in the light of the transcript released yesterday of David Evans’s discussions with Ladbrokes about his runners in a race at Wolverhampton in 2015, that there are day-to-day relationships between trainers and bookies that are a little too chummy for comfort?

It was plain in the immediate aftermath of the hearing into the Black Dave case, when Evans himself conceded that a £3,140 fine was “very lenient”, that there had been plenty going on behind the scenes. But it was not until a word-by-word transcript of the cheery, nudge-nudge conversation between Evans and a Ladbrokes trader emerged yesterday that it truly came into focus.

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from The Guardian http://ift.tt/2iqt5ry