Trainer may regret initial 'delighted' report after his horses' schooling sessions last Friday
One thing that would seem to have been proved by Thursday's awful news about Kauto Star is that no one who works at Paul Nicholls' yard is interested in making a quick buck by illicit means.
The second-favourite for the Cheltenham Gold Cup was injured in a schooling fall last Friday, yet six days later his odds for the race had not wavered on the Betfair betting exchange.
Punters have become wearily familiar with the way in which we now usually learn of a high-profile horse meeting with some mishap. Nearly always, it drifts alarmingly in the market for some future race, its rivals are heavily supported and only then does the betting public get to find out why its money has been lost.
No such thing happened here, which is an astonishing testament to the control Nicholls has established over his operation. According to conventional belief, few worlds are as gossipy as horse racing, or as willing to seek a sly profit, and it is inspiring to see those unlovely stereotypes undermined.
It was through Betfair that Nicholls broke the news, by which time the exchange had suspended its market. Unmatched bets were cancelled before it was reopened, ensuring that no one could take advantage of those who were slow to hear about what had happened.
To a very large extent, this is how we would wish all such incidents to be handled. The only issue would be the gap of six days between Kauto Star hitting the turf and the thud being heard outside Ditcheat.
It seems unlikely that those who backed him during that time will have their stakes refunded if he eventually becomes a non-runner, and some of them will nurse their grievances for a lot longer than the horse has nursed his bruises.
Nicholls' answer is that he cannot tell us everything, all the time. This might be Kauto Star's first fall at home but it is not uncommon for horses to take the odd purler while schooling at stables all round the country and that news is almost never communicated.
On this occasion, the horse did not seem badly crocked and the trainer must have hoped it would all be over in a day or so. Once the recovery had been achieved, perhaps the story would have been told in a "phew, that was a close one" sort of tone.
Instead, Kauto Star's stiffness has lingered and the news has had to be broken without the comfort of a happy ending.
Amid his other regrets, the trainer surely wishes he had not referred to the schooling session in his Betfair column last Saturday, when he expressed himself "delighted" with all the horses who took part.
But if this is the biggest complaint with which punters can reproach him, then it amounts to little indeed and does not compare with what can be said against most other yards. Nicholls has driven forward the practice of passing information to the public by various means and jump racing is the more popular for it.
The sport's appeal has also been enormously enhanced, especially this season, by Kauto Star and it is chilling to consider that we really might have seen the last of him on a racecourse. For the first half of his career it seemed that spectators might never warm to him, certainly not as they warmed to his stablemate Denman.
There is nothing like a late-career revival to endear an old stager to the masses and Kauto Star's return to greatness has been the making of this jumps season. Here's hoping he may yet get the chance to round it off in style.