RACING:  Ferdy Murphy was fined £4,000 by the British Jockey Club yesterday after he "held up his hands" and admitted that his appearance in the BBC's Kenyon Confronts programme, broadcast in June, had acted to bring racing into disrepute. The fine, though well short of the theoretical maximum of £35,000, is one of the largest ever handed down for a disrepute offence.

Murphy was secretly filmed by the BBC team after being approached by the undercover reporter Paul Kenyon, who posed as a prospective owner hoping to win money from betting on his horses. During their discussion Murphy apparently claimed to have won £1,600 on a betting exchange by laying one of his own horses, Christiansted, when he finished seventh in a race at Fakenham.

As he left Portman Square in London, Murphy insisted that he had never placed the alleged bet - or any like it - and that the Jockey Club accepted his denial. However, he conceded that during his conversation with Kenyon "some things were discussed which I'm embarrassed about now and I'd rather they hadn't come out."

Murphy has claimed since the broadcast that the bet on Christiansted was placed by a friend of the horse's owner and that he had heard about it only after the race was over. He says that he told Kenyon to try to make money from betting on Betfair - the leading internet betting exchange - only after becoming exasperated by continual questions on the possibility of stopping horses in order to back them at a better price next time out.

"These people came at me with an agenda," Murphy said yesterday. "I tried to steer them away all the time. I told them that I had no business stopping horses, that there was no future in it.

"We have a lot of people who come into racing to put horses with us who have some weird ideas about how to make money out of them. It's my job to say to them that the proper way to have fun and make a few quid is to have winners. I told them that the filly I was trying to sell them would hopefully win first time out, but they were after a story."

Murphy added that he was disappointed about the size of the penalty imposed yesterday, the largest since March 2000 when the trainers Paul Webber and Oliver Sherwood were fined the same amount for bringing racing into disrepute. The highest fine imposed on a trainer in recent years is the £17,500 penalty paid by David Elsworth in 1988 after prohibited substances were found in his chaser Cavvies Clown.

Murphy was also critical of the secret filming techniques used by the Kenyon Confronts reporters. "It's not a very nice feeling," he said. "It makes you sick to your stomach and when I first realised (what had happened) I rang the Jockey Club straight away. Obviously Mr Kenyon is out to make a living and he has to sell (his films) on to the BBC, but I believe it's illegal in America."

However, Paul Woolwich, the executive producer of Kenyon Confronts, last night issued a fierce defence of his team's approach.

Guardian Service