He Knows No Fear winning at Leopardstown in June 2021© Photo Healy Racing
Last week the Appeals Body published their verdicts on the appeals made by Trainer Luke Comer and the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board (IHRB) into the sanctions imposed on Comer at the original Referral Hearings.
At the Referral Hearings last year Comer was found guilty of a number of offences in relation to 12 horses under his care that had tested positive for prohibited substances (anabolic steroids) and had his licence withdrawn for three years and was ordered to pay a number of large fines and associated costs.
Luke Comer appealed these sanctions, while the IHRB also appealed what they considered the leniency of the sanctions.
The Appeals Body made some technical rulings in favour of Comer and there were some changes to the original verdicts and sanctions, but the bottom line is that the Referral Committee was deemed to be correct in taking the trainer’s licence away for a period of three years and this suspension is now set to commence on 15 July.
Despite the army of experts, both legal and scientific, that were employed by each side in this case which dates back to November 2021, we are still none the wiser as to how the biggest drug scandal in Irish horse racing history came about.
What we do know is that the discovery of all these horses exposed to anabolic steroids was a pure fluke. Every race winner in Ireland is routinely tested after the race and the occasional other runner is also randomly selected for testing. The vast majority of these tests are done by taking a urine or blood sample.
The authorities are aware that anabolic steroids are close to impossible to detect in urine or blood and the recognised method of detection for these banned substances is by taking a hair sample.
“On the 16th of October 2021, a horse trained by Mr Comer called, "He Knows No Fear", having been placed fourth in a race at Leopardstown, was randomly selected for drug testing. Urine and hair samples were taken from the horse. The urine sample was negative, but the hair sample, which had been taken from the horse's mane, tested positive for Methandienone (MD) and Methyltestosterone (MT).”
He Knows No Fear would have also been tested four months earlier when he won at the same track, but those results came back negative, presumably because only his urine was tested.
There were 37,262 runners in races in Ireland in 2021 and IHRB carried out 3,669 tests on them - 2,651 urine; 704 blood and 314 hair. The chances of any horse having a hair sample taken on a race day for analysis was well less than 1%.
During three separate months in 2021 IHRB took zero hair samples from horses at the races. In fact, out of all the horses that competed in the 356 point-to-point races that year not a single hair sample was taken from any of them.
Anyway, following the positive result for He Knows No Fear the IHRB went to Luke Comer’s stables and did hair tests on 118 horses, finding 11 more testing positive for the same anabolic steroids.
Luke Comer, shocked by the revelations and adamant of his innocence, employed what has become the default defence by trainers in such cases - “environmental contamination.” He suggested the steroids may have originated in a batch of hay contaminated by pig slurry that was fed to his horses. For multiple reasons - including the fact that this hay was fed to around 40 horses in his care, but only 12 tested positive - the Referrals Committee and Appeal Body both dismissed this as a credible potential source for the positive samples.
Once environmental contamination has been ruled out there are three other possible explanations for how the horses came to test positive for anabolic steroids, either the hair testing procedures that discovered the traces of anabolic steroids were in some way flawed or some person inadvertently contaminated the horses or some person deliberately administered these prohibited substances to the 12 horses.
Everything we are told about the procedures and testing carried out on behalf of IHRB by the renowned LGC Laboratories in Newmarket would suggest their testing methods are sound and assuming that is correct it seems highly implausible that both the ‘A’ and ‘B’ samples from all 12 horses could came back positive, as they did in this case, by way of an error.
I’m not qualified to work out if a human on a course of prescribed anabolic steroids could inadvertently contaminate 12 different horses, but I presume Luke Comer’s team and IHRB checked with all staff members working at Eagle Lodge at the time of the incidents and none of them were taking similar drugs or knowingly came into contact with them.
That leaves only the most sinister scenario, that these horses were deliberately doped in an attempt to improve their performance, as the likeliest cause of the positive test results.
A slight problem with this theory is that when the IHRB made an unannounced visit to Eagle Lodge after receiving notification of the positive test results for He Knows No Fear they found nothing to suggest anabolic steroids were ever used at the facility. They failed “to find any traces of PAAT (prohibited at all times) substances or objects associated with their administration.”
At the original Referral Hearing the Referral Committee stated: “At the time of the incidents giving rise to the charges there was poor security at the yard especially in terms of camera surveillance. It would have been all too easy for unauthorised persons to gain access to the horses undetected.”
A somewhat odd statement considering the IHRB, in their case against Luke Comer, never alleged there were any security issues at his training yard. It appears the Referral Committee formed this opinion solely based on testimony given by the trainer who, as we now know, is rarely ever on site at Eagle Lodge and according to the Appeal Body “is something of an absentee trainer” and would not necessarily have intimate knowledge of the security systems at the establishment.
It turns out the Referral Committee was way off the mark regarding security standards at the training facility. At the recent Appeal Hearing a new witness gave evidence which refutes that assertion. Eugene Quinn, Security Manager for Comer Group Ireland, told the Appeal Body that at the time of the incidents Eagle Lodge had “two security officers being on duty for 24 hours of every day with one of them involved on a mobile patrol. The other was a static guard at the entrance. There were 8 cameras at the upper yard and sensor flood lighting at both yards which would come on if movement was detected.”
In light of this evidence it's now clear that the Referral Committee was incorrect when it also stated at the original hearing: “In this case there was inadequate supervision and security in the yard which probably facilitated the absorption of the PAAT substances, however it occurred.”
Whatever occurred at Eagle Lodge it certainly appears extremely unlikely that it involved any unauthorised individuals sneaking into the premises to dope the horses which was suggested by the Referral Committee.
Despite the millions of euro spent on this case the culprits remain at large and/or the source of the steroids is unknown and once again racing’s regulators haven’t been able to get to the bottom of a major drugs scandal.
Under the rules, Luke Comer as the licenced trainer takes the full rap despite there not being the slightest suggestion that he had anything to do with it.
I’m sure Comer feels very aggrieved, but in all honesty he shouldn’t have had a trainer’s licence in the first place if he spends the vast majority of his time abroad.
