Jockey Dylan Kitts claimed that he received a ‘threat’ from the father-in-law of a Premier League footballer before he rode Hillsin to a controversial third place finish in July 2023
A young jockey has confessed he deliberately prevented a horse from winning after claiming he received ‘a threat’ from the father-in-law of a Premier League footballer.
Dylan Kitts, a conditional rider, was on board Hillsin, whose display in a race at Worcester in July 2023 sparked enormous controversy and launched a BHA investigation spanning more than two years.
Kitts, Hillsin’s trainer Chris Honour and John Higgins were accused of committing and conspiring to commit a corrupt or fraudulent practice by “agreeing to stop” Hillsin from achieving the best possible placing.
Honour refutes the charges whilst Higgins “absented himself” from the BHA disciplinary panel hearing when it commenced on Monday, owing to medical issues which the inquiry chair, HH Clement Goldstone KC, ruled were “not sufficient” to prevent his participation.
Higgins, 79, who is the father-in-law of Burnley star Ashley Barnes, was served with an exclusion order by the BHA last year for failing to cooperate with the investigation but has not been charged.
Louis Weston, representing the BHA, presented the panel with footage of the conditional jockeys’ handicap hurdle in which Hillsin finished third, a length and a quarter behind the winner.
He stated the footage demonstrated that Kitts made “only a token effort from half a furlong or a quarter of a furlong out and he never picks up his stick. What he does is he holds onto the horse, doesn’t let the horse have its head and holds it back. That is on any view a stopping ride.”
He continued by stating that Kitts had subsequently accepted this during an interview with BHA investigators three months later.
“Mr Kitts accepted that he had given the horse a stopping ride, but he went on to say that he had done so because of what he contended to be a threat that he should do so by a gentleman called John Higgins and that confirmation that he should give a stopping ride and should not win the race was given to him by Chris Honour.”
Weston said Kitts’ admission that he “had not just done it incompetently or badly, but that he had done it by direction and direction of threat in at least the case of Mr Higgins, but confirmed by Mr Honour,” prompted the BHA to broaden its investigation.
The BHA secured telephone records from Kitts and Honour, but not Higgins, who was excluded in 2024. Weston said Hillsin’s registered owner Alan Clegg had never been part of the inquiry and had actually backed his horse to win at Worcester.
Hillsin had joined Honour’s stable two starts after finishing third for another trainer under Kitts at Exeter in April 2023.
“Mr Higgins and his son-in-law Ashley Barnes, who is a football player, bet on it with relatively high levels of success,” Weston said. “They’d won about £5,000. That appears to have led to Mr Higgins making contact with Mr Kitts and money being sent from Mr Barnes to Mr Kitts. The amount of money was £100.
“It’s slightly unusual, we say, for Mr Higgins, who is not the owner, to be sending money to Mr Kitts via his son-in-law. There was also a message which said, ‘Hi D, did you get the other?’ To which the answer came ‘Yes, many thanks’.
“That tells you that from April, Kitts and Higgins knew each other. Higgins was sending money to Kitts and they were in direct communication.”
He went on to say: “Later when he comes to be interviewed Mr Kitts tells things which aren’t true about that relationship because he denied ever receiving money from Ashley Barnes.”
Hillsin was pulled up on his next start in May by Kitts. Weston stated: “Mr Barnes on that occasion hadn’t backed the horse but had bet on another and Mr Kitts was sent £150 two days after the race with Mr Kitts and Mr Higgins being in telephone contact.
“Mr Barnes has been excluded because we enquired of various documents from him and he didn’t provide them. I make no case against Mr Barnes, it just informs the background of the relationship between Mr Kitts and Mr Higgins.”
Weston noted that while Clegg was the owner of Hillsin, the majority of his communication was with Higgins. There were 70 telephone calls between them.
He mentioned that Higgins suggested to the trainer that “if things went well there could be more horses to come, flashing under his nose the prospect of his wealthy son-in-law.”
The inquiry continues.
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