The new dilemma facing racehorse trainers

There is a new dilemma for racehorse trainers. ‘What do I do?’ some of them are now worrying. ‘Do I put up signs saying, “Please don’t pee in the boxes” or “Urination forbidden at all times”?’ Such measures, they appreciate, are hardly going to attract a young couple who’ve come into money and are being shown round the yard thinking of investing in a couple of horses. But if they do not take such steps they risk facing draconian punishments. Let me explain.

Newmarket trainer Ed Dunlop, from one of the most respected families in racing, was last week given a year’s disqualification from racing by a disciplinary panel of the British Horseracing Authority because Lucidity, a filly from his La Grange yard, tested positive for cocaine after finishing second in a race at Brighton. Dunlop has never before in 30 years of training been disciplined by British authorities for a positive drug-finding and the panel attached no blame to him over the cocaine. A BHA inspection of his La Grange yard found no evidence that cocaine had ever been kept or used there and the sentence was suspended for a year. But it will be triggered if there is a second case of cocaine being found in one of his yard’s horses.

The first question here is one of basic justice. The threat hanging over Ed Dunlop for the year ahead is no small matter. Disqualification from training is excommunication. After three decades of blameless endeavour he would be labelled a danger to the sport, disgraced, barred from racecourses and from the only job he knows. If this were a Dick Francis novel, just imagine the potential blackmail threats which a discontented employee or rival could employ against him. But this is real life with real livelihoods at stake. While the disciplinary panel has made no attempt to attach any blame to Dunlop, it says it has no discretion under the rules to alter the punishment for a positive test.