BHA must knock on Moonlit door over possible abuse of medication rules
BHA should take note of a blogger's fresh questioning over wider implications of a 2009 case involving Nicky Henderson
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Greg Wood
The Guardian, Sunday 24 February 2013 19.01 GMT
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Nicky Henderson at his Seven Barrows yard in Berkshire as the trainer prepared for next month's Cheltenham Festival. Photograph: Hugh Routledge/Rex Features
The Guardian's sport section led with a five-page report on the battle against doping the Saturday before last, and the considerable threat that drugs pose to the credibility and integrity of major sporting events, in Britain and elsewhere. Racing, which has many more spectators in the UK each year than any sport bar football, fell below the radar, which may well have left the regulators at the British Horseracing Authority feeling quite pleased with themselves.

Three days later, a link appeared in my Twitter timeline which was a useful reminder that racing has little cause to be complacent. It pointed towards an internet post by a punter and blogger called Daniel Kelly which detailed the BHA's significant – and ongoing – failure to investigate the extent of the possible abuse of raceday medication rules by some members of Lambourn's training community in the wake of the Moonlit Path affair.

The BHA's view appears to be that the Moonlit Path case is ancient history. Nicky Henderson, the mare's trainer, was banned from entering horses in races for three months in the summer of 2009. James Main, the vet who injected her with the banned substance tranexamic acid (TA) a few hours before she was due to race at Huntingdon in February 2009, while listing the procedure in his records as a "pre-race check", was struck off for 10 months by the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons in February 2011. Main was readmitted to the RCVS register in February 2012.

Yet what is still hanging, even now, is the implication in the findings of the RCVS's hearing into the case that, prior to Moonlit Path's positive test, the administration of TA to horses on the day of a race had become almost a matter of routine, not just in Henderson's yard, but in stables all over Lambourn employing Main as their vet.

The College's disciplinary committee made its view very plain: "The committee has considered … the use of the term "pre-race check" on Moonlit Path's clinical records [and] … concluded that the use of the term was, in effect, a protocol developed over several years between the practice and Mr Henderson to conceal the administration of tranexamic acid by injection to a horse on a race day."

The RCVS hearing took place about 18 months after the BHA's hearing into the Henderson case, at which Main refused to attend to give evidence. Henderson, however, did testify at the RCVS hearing, where he told the panel that "plenty of trainers" were using the same banned substance at the time. He believed this because of "the number of trainers who came up to me after the case and said, 'I'm not using it any more'".

There is a strong suggestion here that the injection of horses with a drug on the day of a race had become a common practice in a number of stables in the Lambourn area. Henderson, in effect, took one for the team.

The BHA, as a responsible sporting regulator, might have been expected to investigate that suggestion fully, to establish just how many yards were flouting the most unambiguous rule in the anti-doping canon, that horses cannot be given anything bar "normal food and water" on racedays. It could defrost and retest some of those samples from the period which have been retained for future analysis, for instance, or offer Main another chance to give the BHA a full account of when, where and how frequently he performed his "pre-race checks".

Instead, the authority has seemed content to let it lie. Main, meanwhile, whose excellence as a vet, particularly where horses are concerned, has never been in dispute, has returned to practise, including a long-standing role as the raceday vet at Newbury.

If Adam Brickell, the BHA's new head of integrity, risk and legal following Paul Scotney's departure in November, wishes to get in touch with Main, at least it will not be too difficult to find him.

*If you want to link to Daniel Kelly's blog, it is at http://dgkelly84.wordpress.com/

Ahhhh Tollbrae...

Good stuff TT...

Top fred mucker. I'll bang it up if yer not about.

great thread

Great thread..a microcosm of how things are run in Britain.

Dan Kelly ‏@muffinmannhc
Good to see @Greg_Wood_ pick up the baton: http://bit.ly/13IhaBl  Hope he gets further than I did; No comment & No interview.

Great stuff from DK - sadly it takes a blogger and Tweeter to do the job of the BHA's integrity department.

Sickening stuff from NJH's yard and while we're at it how exactly was Tom Symonds (someone who'd just been heavily implicated in a very serious doping enquiry that led to his boss servign a ban) judged to be a fit and proper person to train?

Also surely we should now look at year on year renewal of licenses for trainers and jockeys rather than the current system?

A very interesting point you make TheAnorak.....

Hoof

Btw Anorak............chosen because of previous accusations.hth

Expand please on your assumptions?

A rightful boot...

some outstanding stuff on here and very good piece by Greg Wood.

There are 14 other courses that would be pretty safe as well...

So, if we take what has been said so far as regards the Al Zarooni situation to be the truth, then we can conclude that;

- Godolphin employ veterinary staff who are prepared to inject horses with substances without knowing what they contain
- It then must follow that either;

a) these veterinary staff are providing inaccurate and untruthful medical records for these horses, or
b) if they have been recording accurate medical records, no-one involved at Godolphin has noticed the problem with these records

The two questions that immediately spring to mind are;

1) What are the next steps that BHA are going to take to investigate this extremely serious matter?
2) Why is the first of those steps not carrying out a thorough investigation at Godolphin Stables, given their common ownership, to ensure that this has not been happening there too?