Killarney race course: The John Feane-trained Ano Manna started 7-2 favourite for a handicap and won comfortably under jockey Leigh Roche. It quickly emerged afterwards that it wasn’t Ano Manna at all but her stable companion Indigo Five who was due to run in a later race. Photograph: Valerie O'Sullivan/FREE PIC
The mix up was discovered after the winner’s microchip was scanned, as is procedure following all races, by an Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board official. The stewards established the blunder was due to Feane’s representative saddling the wrong one of two similar-looking fillies.Just Beautiful in Sun Chariot mix for in-form trainer Paddy Twomey
Such foul-ups can happen to anyone. Perhaps the most notorious case came in 2020 when the Group One Fillies Mile at Newmarket saw a pair of subsequent classic winners trained by Aidan O’Brien, Snowfall and Mother Earth, saddled incorrectly. As is the case here, all horses are scanned when they arrive at the racecourse stableyard. As isn’t the case in Ireland, runners in Britain also have their identities checked before they enter the parade ring to race.
Running a scanner over a single tired horse after a race shouldn’t be beyond most people. The argument goes, however, that doing the same thing to a large field of excitable thoroughbreds before they compete is a different proposition. It isn’t something just anyone can do.