Ireland's champion trainer Aidan O'Brien has described the circumstances that led to Mother Earth and Snowfall carrying the wrong saddles and jockeys in the Bet365 Fillies' Mile (G1) last October as a "million to one shot" as full details of the embarrassing episode were revealed at a BHA inquiry Jan. 21.
Despite being absent from Newmarket on the day of the race, O'Brien was fined £4,000 by an independent disciplinary panel for failing to ensure his employees were sufficiently informed and able to identify each horse, which meant the horses in question were incorrectly saddled and ridden by the wrong jockeys.
The disciplinary panel heard both horses had been scanned to check their identity on entry to the pre-parade ring and both riders weighed out correctly, with the error occurring when O'Brien's representative at Newmarket, Kevin Murphy, incorrectly saddled Mother Earth with Snowfall's intended saddle and vice versa.
Asked in the stewards' inquiry if he could explain what happened, the panel heard that Murphy had thought "that one horse was the other" and that it was a "simple mistake." He went on to explain that he runs O'Brien's yard in Newmarket and was not familiar with the horses.
O'Brien, who represented himself at the hearing, remains bamboozled by what occurred and revealed he had introduced measures which included providing his team on the ground with a microchip scanner so they can be sure of the horses' identity when they come into their care.
"All I can say is I'm sorry," O'Brien told the panel. "Obviously everything was a little bit of a mess with the pandemic, and logically it was very difficult to have runners in England at all, so we had to leave our team of people over there, and they were just taking over the horses as they were getting off the plane.
"It was something that happened that we could never expect or believe could happen, and the changes we've made since then is that the lads will all travel with a scanner now, and every horse will be scanned as they get off the plane by our crew that are in England."
He added: "Our man at the races was very experienced, and I suppose it's just one of these things that happens. Even the girl that led her up is 62, and a very experienced lady. It was the most crazy thing that could have happened.
"If you said it to me, I thought it would have been a million to one shot, but things do happen, and that's the way it is. (With) the scanner there could be no possibility it could happen again."
As well as being checked on arrival at the racecourse, current guidelines state that horses' microchips are to be scanned after leaving the stable yard en route to the parade ring. However, the BHA will consider the feasibility of implementing an additional check after a horse has been saddled to avoid such an error happening again.
"Since the incident at Newmarket, additional ID checks have been in place at major flat fixtures to minimize the risk of a recurrence," said a BHA spokesman.
"A longer term piece of work has been ongoing since October to look at the additional resource, technology, and funding required to implement a further ID check once horses are saddled.
"It is particularly challenging in the current environment due to the additional resourcing requirements that the BHA's COVID-19 protocols already place upon staffing levels, but additional checks are being carried out on a discretionary basis.
"We will continue the work looking at the feasibility of implementing an additional check following saddling permanently and communicate any changes to participants and the public as necessary."
While accepting it was a genuine mistake and giving "full credit" to O'Brien for initially bringing the matter to the attention of the stewards, chairman of the panel Philip Curl highlighted that the error had occurred in a high-profile race as he issued O'Brien with a fine above the entry point of £2,000.
