Last week’s news that Luke Comer, a billionaire property developer who trains a string of horses as a sideline, had been suspended from training for three years by the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board after a dozen of his horses tested positive for steroids was an abrupt reminder that doping is an ever-present danger to the integrity and reputation of the sport.
It should be noted at this stage that Comer insists that he is “entirely innocent” and intends to appeal against the decision of the IHRB’s referrals committee.
Meanwhile, the case has prompted reminders of the scandal a decade ago when it emerged that top-class horses including a Classic winner, Encke, had been given anabolic steroids as part of an even more extensive doping programme at Mahmoud al-Zarooni’s Moulton Paddocks stable in Newmarket.
In many respects, however, the differences between the two cases are more informative than the similarities.
Back in 2013, Zarooni was a Classic-winning trainer who was still on the rise, with a three-figure string of horses running in the royal blue of Sheikh Mohammed’s Godolphin operation. Comer, for all his immense wealth, has a relative handful of horses in his yard, and a miserable – in fact, borderline embarrassing – strike-rate over the last three decades of around 3%.
He argues that the steroid positives were the result of accidental contamination, probably through feed, and while the Committee decided that this was highly unlikely, it stopped short of ruling that the drugs had definitely been administered deliberately. Since steroids are on the list of substances that are Prohibited At All Times (PAAT), however, their presence alone was enough to warrant a three-year suspension for Comer’s licence.
This uncertainty was, in part, because the dozen positives on Comer’s horses – one on a runner post-race and 11 more, all positive, on horses at his stable once the initial test had proved positive - were on hair samples. These simply show that steroids were in a horse’s system many weeks or even months earlier, unlike blood or urine samples, which can be negative for a steroid within as little as a few days, however it might have found its way into a horse’s system.
Hair sampling was still being developed when the Zarooni scandal emerged, and an important aspect of the Comer case is that it established the validity of the testing process.
Comer, one of Britain and Ireland’s richest men, was tooled up with top-dollar lawyers and expert witnesses at the IHRB hearing, and their first line of attack, as you might expect, was an attempt to discredit the testing regime. But they failed, which forced Comer and his team to accept that the steroids were present and pursue their alternative defence of accidental contamination.
The British Horseracing Authority said on Monday that horses linked to the bloodstock operation of John Dance, who is at the centre of an investigation by the Financial Conduct Authority into alleged fraud and money laundering, have been barred from running under the banners of either Coverdale Stud or Titanium Racing with immediate effect.
Dance’s investment company, WealthTek LLP, was shut down by the FCA in April after the financial regulator discovered “serious regulatory and operational issues” with the business. Horses in Dance’s ownership were initially barred from running due to a “freezing” order on his assets, but a subsequent agreement between the BHA and FCA allowed them to compete, under the names of either Coverdale Stud or Titanium Racing, with any prize-money earned being frozen.
In a brief statement on Monday, the BHA said that it had re-imposed the ban because “further concerns have since come to light and as a result, the BHA has taken interim action to stop all such runners.”
Dance, who has not commented publicly on the events since WealthTek’s closure in April, was a successful and high-profile owner on the Flat, with horses including the outstanding filly Laurens, the winner of six Group One events.
The majority of his former string is stabled in James Horton’s Middleham yard, which has sent out nearly 100 runners for Coverdale Stud this year, while Charlie Johnston, Edward Bethell and Jedd O’Keeffe are among the trainers to have saddled runners for Titanium Racing.
Hair-sampling is now an essential weapon in the battle to keep anabolic steroids out of racing, because their use to improve performance is never likely to be a one-off attempt to win a big race or land a gamble. Steroid-doping is a programme that requires many weeks of regular administration as well as regular training to achieve the desired effect, which is to encourage muscle development and a general well-being which will persist long after the drug is out of a horse’s system.
This raises a point at which there is an interesting similarity between Zarooni and Comer, who told the referrals committee that he spends only three months of the year in Ireland. As a result, the Irish regulators may well now consider whether it should be a condition of a licence that a trainer should spend rather more than 25% of their time actually on the premises.
But it is a reminder too that Zarooni, who was presented at the time as a “lone wolf” rogue operator who careered off the rails, was in Dubai, attending the two-month Carnival meeting at Meydan, for all but a very small part of the time when horses were being systematically doped at his yard.
And yet, his handwritten, back-of-an-envelope list of the horses that had been doped was accepted by the British Horseracing Authority as the end of the affair, after an investigation and hearing process that lasted less than a week. When it subsequently transpired that he had forgotten to include the previous year’s St Leger winner, among others, it was too late to conduct the in-depth investigation that the biggest doping scandal in British racing history warranted and deserved. Even a decade later, it still seems extraordinary that they managed to get away with it.
Had hair-sampling been available in 2013, meanwhile, we might have a clearer idea, for instance, of whether Encke had been given steroids earlier in the year before he denied Camelot a place in history as a Triple Crown winner in 2012.
Redcar 1.50 Tacitus 2.25 Cuban Storm 3.00 Elzaal 3.35 Ron O 4.10 Jojo Rabbit 4.45 Plink 5.20 Assembled
Uttoxeter 2.00 Dakota Beat 2.35 Olivers Travels 3.10 Justshortofabubble 3.45 Do No Wrong 4.20 Isabella Bee 4.55 Democritus
Yarmouth 2.15 Rosenzoo 2.50 Witness Stand 3.25 Manhattan Mirage 4.00 Prometeo 4.35 Musical Tribute (nb) 5.10 Tarbaan 5.45 Stone Circle (nap) 6.15 Darlo Pride
Newcastle 4.50 Toscan Genius 5.25 The Hun 6.00 Balqaa 6.30 Arizona Desert 7.00 Dianara 7.30 Sun Power 8.00 Patontheback 8.30 Explorers Way
But at least we have the technology now, and the Comer case could hardly send a clearer message to anyone pondering the considerable effort, expense and risk of using steroids to gain an edge that ultimately, their cheating is unlikely to go undetected.
Racing journalist John O’Hara dies, aged 63
John O’Hara, who has died at the age of 63, was born into a family with a bookmaking business but pursued his own passion for the turf in a long and wide-ranging career in racing journalism, which included regular contributions on the Guardian’s racing desk as well as work for The Sporting Life, Teletext and The Sportsman, a short-lived competitor to the Racing Post where O’Hara was racing editor.
The most constant thread in his output, though, was the Straight From The Stable column in the Racing Post Weekender, which O’Hara wrote for more than 25 years. Punters could always rely on the diligence and comprehensiveness that went into every account of a trainer’s string, from giants of the game like Sir Henry Cecil and Willie Mullins to smaller operators like Julie Camacho, the subject of his final Weekender column last week.
Cecil and Kieren Fallon, the six-times champion jockey, both worked closely with O’Hara on columns in the Weekender. “Usually when somebody dies, everyone will say “what a lovely fella”, but John genuinely was,” Fallon told the Racing Post last week. “He was a kind, down-to-earth guy and a pleasure to work with. He had so much knowledge, I didn’t have to do a whole lot of homework.”
O’Hara was also an excellent editor with a finely-tuned eye for details and blunders, who saved this reporter and, I suspect, plenty more from embarrassment many times over the years.
He felt that Newmarket was the true home of racing, but O’Hara was also very much at home at the Breeders’ Cup, one of his favourite meetings of the year, where the ability to roam the barns and interview one trainer after another played to his strengths.
He is survived by his wife, Bridget, and sons Edward and George.
