If the Tigers represented power play, the Exiles personified passion play Passion told, but only just. They left it very late indeed before getting the drop on second-placed Leicester, who had their hands full trying to subdue the irrepressible home team. THE MATCH programmes were late and so were London Irish. That was probably some of the best rugby we have played this season.”
Francois Pienaar led the recovery operation as Saracens shrugged off their defeat by Harlequins with a seven-try destruction of West Hartlepool.The player-coach marked his first starting appearance of the season by breaking the deadlock with a 23rd minute try that set the bottom club on the road to their seventh defeat of the season.Saracens looked far from convincing in the first-half, but romped to victory after the break with second-half tries from Tony Diprose, Richard Wallace, Kyran Bracken and replacements Richard Hill and Kevin Sorrell.Northampton rested all their eight fit internationals for their Anglo- Welsh friendly against Swansea and went down 34-18.Swansea scored a try in each half from No 8 Lee Jones, and added tries from winger Matthew Robinson and scrum-half Rhodri Jones to seal their victory.. THE SARACENS director of rugby, Mark Evans, admitted their surprise defeat by Harlequins had affected his side before they coasted to a 52- 3 victory at Premiership strugglers West Hartlepool last night. “We were a little bit anxious, we didn’t want to make any mistakes after last Saturday,” said Evans “But this was a very, very important win for us. Had I won a match it would have been different of course,” he said.This time Rafter has not experienced the sort of comedown he suffered after winning the US Open crown for the first time last year.

Having retained that title, he is still theoretically capable of preventing the American Pete Sampras from finishing the season in top place once again.Rafter, Sampras and the Chilean Marcelo Rios, who briefly took the No 1 ranking from Sampras earlier this year, are the only players with a reasonable chance of topping the rankings at the end of the year.All three are playing in Lyons, with Sampras and Rios entering the tournament today, but none has ranking points to lose.The defending champion and No 8 seed, Fabrice Santoro of France, was in good form yesterday as he beat his countryman, Stephane Huet, 6-3, 6-3.In Ostrava Slovakia’s Jan Kroslak upset the fifth-seeded Croatian Goran Ivanisevic 4-6, 6-2, 7-6 and David Prinosil, of Germany, defeated the sixth seed, Mark Philippoussis of Australia, 6-3, 6-7, 6-3 in the Czech Indoor tournament.On a day of surprises, the most astonishing defeat came in the women’s event, the Kremlin Cup in Moscow, where the 16-year-old Russian, Nadezhda Petrova, ranked 175 in the world, beat the world No 20 and former French Open champion, Iva Majoli, 6-7, 7-6, 6-0 in the first round.. Our argument is that a microchipped horse is one that can be permanently identified and therefore definitely kept out of the human food chain.”. PATRICK RAFTER, the world No 3, banished a bad memory when he cruised into the second round of the Lyons Open last night. The Australian second seed dismissed the American Steve Campbell 6-2, 6-2 in just over an hour and demonstrated the form he will need to contest the world No 1 ranking for the year’s end.
Last year in Lyons, Rafter lost in the first round and handed back to the organisers the cheque he had been offered to enter the tournament.”I gave it back because I felt I was not well prepared enough for this tournament. The reason is that the minimal residual levels of drugs are not all known and so all will be banned to avoid danger to those who might consume the horse. And microchipping will enable ex-racehorses which have been neglected to be properly identified.”The microchip will also be a valuable tool in an area where there are serious implications for equine welfare because of Brussels bureaucracy.

There is currently a move (being strongly resisted by British and Irish vets) within the European Union to prevent the use of drugs – even painkillers used on humane grounds – on horses because on the Continent equines, many purpose-bred, are a legitimate part of the menu.Anderson said: “The idea of not being able to treat a horse in pain with drugs is apalling, but there is a real danger of it happening. Those that leave the confines of the racing world will still be traceable, whether they go on to perform in other sports or indeed fall on hard times.Anderson said: “Those that go eventing or showjumping often lose their identities and appear under another name. Numbers are likely to be in excess of 12,000 and vets estimate a cost of around pounds 10 for an implantation.But security and integrity in racing apart, there are other benefits from a permanent identification record for each thoroughbred. It is quick and easy to do, and quick and easy to utilise, and will be to the benefit of everyone involved, from breeder to punter.”The British Horseracing Board and the Irish Turf Club are to fund the cost of the microchips, which will be bulk purchased to keep costs down.

The procedure, no more painful or complicated than an injection, will be carried out by veterinary surgeons at the same time that the foal is blood-typed and has his or her markings recorded.Hamish Anderson, stud book director at Weatherbys, said: “Ours will be the first mainstream thoroughbred population to use microchipping. Two years ago Reg Hollinshead’s Loch Style ran as Taniyar at Southwell, and in 1995 Ela-Ment, trained at Limpsfield in Surrey by Brian Pearce, ran twice as Hong Kong Venture.Weatherbys, the body responsible for the registration of horses, started trials last year after several years’ monitoring in other countries. Microchips are already extensively used on trotting horses in Europe and in farther- flung places like Saudi Arabia and Thailand.South Africa is soon to adopt the system; the authorities in America, where racehorses have a number tattoed on the lip before they go into training, are keeping a watching brief.The chip itself is about the size of a grain of rice and is embedded around two inches deep in the large nuchal ligament above the vertabrae of the neck on the left-hand side. A special hand-held device can read the microchip code in a matter of seconds, which means every horse can be checked instantly, not only on arrival at the race track but also in the parade ring.At present thoroughbreds in Britain are identified on racecourses by means of their colour, white markings and whorls (patterns of hair growth) indicated on an outline drawing on their passports, an accurate but not absolutely infallible method and time-consuming to check in every case.Earlier this year a juvenile filly, Oriel Star, ran twice as Slightly Dusty after the pair, both from David Evans’ yard at Leighton, on the Welsh border, had become mixed up as yearlings.In August, Jack Berry’s two-year-old Perigeux mistakenly ran as his three- year-old stablemate Royal Dream.

Mistaken identities – of which there have been several lately – are potentially more embarrassing and damaging to the sport’s integrity in the modern era.But from next year every thoroughbred foal registered in Britain and Ireland will have an individually-numbered microchip implanted in its neck as a lifelong failsafe means of identification. The scam was confirmed by a photo of the horse taken in the winners’ enclosure with his mouth open The teeth visible were not those of a juvenile. The swindle was masterminded by Ken Richardson, one of three men convicted of conspiracy to defraud in June 1984. Richardson received a suspended jail sentence, a fine and in 1986 was warned off for 25 years by the Jockey Club Sue Montgomery. WHEN ONE of the Turf ’s more unscrupulous types of yore was asked by a courtroom judge to define a “good thing”, he is reputed to have replied: “A useful three-year-old in a moderate two-year-old race, your honour.”

But now technology, in the form of a coded microchip, is about to make the ringer – a horse deliberately or accidentally masquerading as another – an extinct species.
Intentional substitutions have long been part and parcel of the darker side of racing’s colourful history, but are (at least those to have been discovered) relatively rare. At the Old Bailey in October 1920, Barrie was sentenced to three years hard labour.1982: FLOCKTON GREYWhen a big grey gelding won a five furlongs two-year-old race at Leicester in March by 20 lengths after being heavily backed, stewards ordered an inquiry and bookies were advised not to pay out.