Turf Club officials© Photo Healy Racing
Perhaps the most significant recent comment about doping within Irish racing hasn’t come in a court or on a racecourse but in a drab Dail Committee room where a Department of Agriculture official basically dismissed the idea that Turf Club officials might be given ‘seizure’ powers. That means the industry’s new drugs-regime, due to kicks in on January 1, will have one hand tied behind its back before it even starts.
It won’t be spun like that. Instead there will be aspirations galore towards greater testing of all thoroughbreds, both in and out of training, to make sure the steroids scourge is banished. There may even be more money provided to the Turf Club on the back of headline cases involving Philip Fenton and Pat Hughes. But even before it starts there is a glaring problem if racing’s regulator remains so toothless it still needs state babysitting to help meaningfully deter those determined to cheat.
There have been almost one hundred stable inspections already in 2014, five times more than the previous year. However the Turf Club estimates only thirty of those were in conjunction with Department of Agriculture officials who actually do have powers to seize illegal drugs when they find them. The other seventy were hardly meaningless, but only the deluded can argue they didn’t lack a fundamental clout.
If a Turf Club official had spotted something suspicious among those seventy inspections, in order to seize it for examination they would have had to contact either the Department or the Gardai, a laborious process leaving ample time for whatever might happen to happen. This is an environment where the Nitrotain found at Fenton’s yard can get flushed through a horse’s system in a day. More haste might mean less speed but it’s only in fairytales that the tortoise emerges on top.
At the heart of the Turf Club’s 2015 proposals is a desire to get more powers that would allow them proactively seek out drug-cheats and avoid the sort of criticism that has swirled around it even since the steroids issue publicly broke back in February. That requires the Department to play ball, and the Department clearly don’t want to.
Assistant Secretary Brendan Gleeson asked himself a question at a recent Dail Committee hearing, and then definitively answered it: “Is it appropriate to expand the remit of the Turf Club beyond the tracks? I have some doubts about the wisdom or even the legal propriety of giving a private body these very strong policing powers outside its strict remit...this is something we considered and what I am saying reflects the view of our legal services division...the reality is that when things happen off-track, they are generally done in collaboration with the Department. We have investigations personnel who are empowered under various individual legislative measures to do the types of thing the Turf Club is as anxious to do off-track.”
In bureaucratic-speak that’s as close to an ‘eff-off’ as makes no difference. And with the best will in the world, if racing’s regulator continues to require such babysitting to make a move, then credibility already badly-scarred by the steroids scandal isn’t going to improve substantially any time soon.
Tip-toeing in the wake of Department officials is already the reality. Plenty mightn’t trust racing to effectively regulate itself but if it doesn’t get a chance to prove otherwise then all that’s ultimately likely to result is a lot of movement and shaping to little end.
Of course department officials are ultimately responsible to their political bosses, and racing does pride itself on its political pull. Maybe Mr Gleeson might yet have to backtrack. But that would require political will – and you suspect perhaps on racing’s side most of all.
More immediately there will be particular interest in finding out if Fenton intends following Hughes down the appeal route. Predictions of two to four year delays before penalties can be handed out should both trainers pursue appeals is a PR nightmare and hardly conducive to persuading anyone of racing’s ability to tidy up its own mess. Still, two to four years might be alarmist: it wasn’t just legal types who noted an absence of defence witnesses at last week’s trial.
On a much happier note, Aidan O’Brien is much too careful a character in public to stick two-fingers up at anyone but Adelaide’s Cox Plate success must have been as satisfying a win as the champion trainer has enjoyed in quite a while considering the ridicule he was held up by many in Australia after the 2008 Melbourne Cup.
It was an interesting race and it threw up some interesting questions: is Adelaide much better than we thought or are the top Aussie middle-distance horses very ordinary indeed? When you consider the stone extra Adelaide had to carry because he was technically a four year old in southern hemisphere time, and the wide draw, and the wide passage through the race, not to mention the passage to the other side of the world, he’s either a world-beater or simply a good one against just OK opposition.
A definitive answer might not be long coming: if he’s a world-beater, then he’ll surely be seeing Ballydoyle again. If not, that will be a pretty conclusive verdict on his Australian rivals.
Another verdict widely passed on the Cox Plate was that Ryan Moore was brilliant. He wasn’t and in fairness the man himself appeared keen to stress that too. Once the horse blew the start from the wide draw, Moore’s options were reduced to one. He was typically ruthless in executing it but among an ever lengthening list of inspired big-race rides, this wasn’t one of them.
Moore will be busy at the Breeders Cup which is not any sort of cup of tea to a lot of race-fans this side of the Pond. Considering the dope culture in the US, it is very much a curio deal, especially in terms of punting. Sometimes though there can be a bit of big priced value provided by American bettors unfamiliar with European form, and maybe the French Guineas winner Karakontie can provide such an opportunity in the Mile.
Look at the Foret again and decide how much ground the colt lost after just a furlong, and also when hampered in the straight. Then factor in how his trainer won the Mile in 1997 with Spinning World, and wonder how he is twice the price of Anodin who also ran in that Foret. And after all that, ponder how there’ll probably be similarly priced winners at Down Royal that day too!
