The King George-winning trainer, “Shark” Hanlon, kept it uncharacteristically brief last week after hearing that he had been banned for 10 months by the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board for transporting a dead horse along public roads and through a village near his stable on an open trailer. “There is going to be an appeal put in straight away, that is one thing,” Hanlon said, “and I can’t say too much at this stage as my legal team have advised me not to say too much. But we are very surprised and very disappointed with the results of the hearing.”
Hanlon’s disappointment, from some angles at least, is understandable. A snap inspection of his yard by IHRB investigators after the incident in June found that “all welfare and other matters were in order”, and while his undeniable negligence in failing to properly secure a tarpaulin over the dead horse was compounded by the decision to then hitch the trailer to his instantly recognisable horse box, he did not consciously sit astride the dead horse and pose for a photo. Gordon Elliott, who notoriously did exactly that, was banned for a year with the last six month suspended, which is only slightly more than Hanlon’s (pre-appeal) penalty of 10 months with the chance to apply for a suspension of the final five after serving four months.
