Race fixing within Britain's horse-racing industry has been exposed by the BBC's undercover investigative series, Kenyon Confronts.

A number of leading racehorse trainers suggested different methods of cheating during the team's five month investigation.

Paul Kenyon and his team visited race courses and stables all over the country looking to buy a horse and see how many trainers would be prepared to cheat in order to make money from gambling.

Races are often carved up beforehand...the genuine punters don't stand a chance. A jockey

Paul Kenyon was assaulted twice while undercover. The Jockey Club warned all trainers to look out for him, but he was finally rumbled after his secret-filming equipment was discovered in an hotel room.

A dozen trainers, including some of the sport's biggest names, all agreed they would deliberately con the racing authorities and the betting public into believing a horse was worse that it actually was.

To cheat they make sure a horse does badly in some races in order to lower the handicap - this means the horse will not carry as many weights as it should - giving it an unfair advantage.

'Using the system'

The trainer and owner of a horse that is wrongly handicapped stand to make a lot of money from gambling.

A jockey, who we cannot identify, told the programme: "Races are often carved up beforehand, the genuine punters don't stand a chance."

One of the trainers said: "We don't mind cheating, it's not cheating, it's just using the system."

Paul Kenyon was attacked by a trainer

Another said he would deliberately not train a horse in order to lose races and reduce its handicap.

The Jockey Club which regulates the sport has strict rules to try and make sure that every horse does its best to win a race in which it is competing.

Rule 155 says that "every horse which runs in a race shall be run on its merits".

It goes on to say: "No trainer or any other person shall prevent or try to prevent in any way any horse from winning a race or of obtaining the best possible placing."

Gambling coups

A former jockey admitted that he had been paid to make sure favourites he was riding lost, and that it was easy to look like you are trying to win on a horse when you are not.

And a bookmaker told the team he had paid jockeys to stop favourites.

In order to try and watch the process first-hand the Kenyon Confronts team decided to buy a horse from a trainer with over 20 years experience and a reputation for pulling off gambling coups.

Kenyon was pushed to the ground

He said he had a horse that had been "a fiddling horse all its life" and he could get its handicap down in about six weeks, ready to make a lot of money from a gamble.

The horse was raced twice with the sole intention of doing badly, the handicap went down and then the Kenyon Confronts team were all set up for the final race.

More than �5bn is bet each year on horse racing in the UK.

The evidence in this programme now raises the worrying question - how many races are genuine, and how many are fixed by owners, trainers, jockeys and bookmakers?

Kenyon Confronts: Horses for courses? was broadcast on BBC One on 11 June 2002.