Jockey stopped horse winning race after ‘threat’ from Premier League footballer’s father-in-law

A young jockey has admitted he deliberately stopped a horse from winning after receiving ‘a threat’ from the father-in-law of a Premier League footballer.

Dylan Kitts, a conditional rider, was aboard Hillsin whose performance in a race at Worcester in July 2023 provoked a huge storm and triggered a BHA investigation lasting more than two years. Kitts, Hillsin’s trainer Chris Honour and John Higgins were charged with committing and conspiring to commit a corrupt or fraudulent practice by “agreeing to stop” Hillsin from achieving the best possible position.

Honour denies the charges while Higgins “absented himself” from the BHA disciplinary panel hearing when it began on Monday, due to medical issues which the inquiry chair, HH Clement Goldstone KC, ruled were “not sufficient” to prevent him taking part.

Higgins, 79, is the father-in-law of Burnley star Ashley Barnes, who was issued 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, showed the panel footage of the conditional jockeys handicap hurdle in which Hillsin finished third, a length and a quarter behind the winner.

He said the footage showed 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 went on the state that Kitts had subsequently accepted this when he underwent 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,” led the BHA to widen its investigation.

The BHA obtained 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 investigation and in fact bet on his horse to win at Worcester.

Hillsin had joined nothing Honour, two starts after finishing third for another stable 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 continued: “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 said: “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.”

West said that although Clegg was the owner of Hillsin the majority of his communication was with Higgins. There were 70 telephone calls between them.

He said 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.”