Perth photo-finish blunder reverses winner, punters left stranded

Perth’s three-day festival ended in a photo-finish mess when judge William Fraser Perratt first gave the closing bumper to Ksar D’Oudairies, only for stewards to reverse the call nearly an hour later and confirm stablemate Fiskardo by a nose.

The final race went off at 5.35pm on Friday, April 24, 2026, and the confusion spread fast across Perth Racecourse in Scotland. Both horses were trained by Mickey Bowen, and the original call briefly pointed to Ksar D’Oudairies before further checks overturned it in Fiskardo’s favour. Shane Fenelon was in the saddle for the corrected winner, who started at 14-1.

The delay cut to the heart of confidence in the raceday system. Betting settlements had already been made after the weighed-in signal, leaving punters stranded when the amended result finally came through. Gordon Brown said bookmakers had already paid out before the correction arrived, underlining how quickly a mistaken call can ripple beyond the track and into wallets.

For James Bowen, the switch carried a sharper sporting edge. The amended result did not change the winning trainer, but it denied him a possible fifth victory across the three-day meeting. In a tight festival race decided by a nose, that distinction mattered as much for the record books as it did for anyone tied into the betting market.

The British Horseracing Authority stewards opened an inquiry and interviewed Perratt, the photo-finish operator and the chief steward before forwarding a report to head office for further consideration. The authority said it regretted the confusion and the understandable frustration that followed, and said it would review the incident further. That response now sits at the center of the story, because the error was not just that the wrong horse was announced first, but that the correction took nearly an hour to reach the official result.

The Perth reversal also revived memories of another photo-finish controversy at Eagle Farm in 2022, when stewards overturned the original call after examining the photo print. Incidents like these are rare, but when they happen they expose the pressure points in the chain from judge to stewards to bookmakers. At Perth, the result was eventually righted; the bigger question is whether the protocols around the finish line are strong enough to keep punters, participants and officials from being caught in the same trap again.