The Black Horse Inside Coolmore

chinguetti · 20-12-2020 10:08pm

I didn't read David Walsh's article in the Times today but the IHRB have put out a statement so more attention is getting brought on this. If Walsh and Kimmage keep asking questions, this could get quite interesting as they're the kind of guys who get the story no matter how long it takes.

The Tetrarch · 21-12-2020 11:52am

It is nice to read the IHRB press release, and see they are patting themselves on the back for their number of tests.

When you read the book you learn that they almost always issue a fine for a drug offence, often the minimum Euro 1,000, instead of a ban.
Then they waive the fine with a comment like "the trainer had taken all reasonable precautions to avoid a breach of the rule and that the substance had been administered unknowingly".

A good excuse is contaminated feed.
Another good excuse is the vet administered the drug too close to the race and the drug did not have time to exit the system.
The trainer is never at fault. It was the feed supplier, or the vet.

The IHRB seldom/never state the drug found was slightly over the allowed limit (if there is an allowed level) or a mile over the allowed limit.
One trainer had his fine waived for a Cobalt breach. Another case heard on the same day for Cobalt - that trainer was fined Euro 1,000. No info on how much Cobalt in each case. The first trainer is famous and extremely well connected, the second trainer is not.

The Tetrarch · 21-12-2020 12:05pm

Do you remember the case Chris Gordon, Head of Security and Investigations of the IHRB (Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board), took against The Irish Racehorse Trainers Association (IRTA) for defamation? The High Court jury awarded Gordon Euro 300,000 for damages.

An extract from the book: "The IRTA is a company limited by guarantee and and is understood to be protected by a maximum liability of Euro 6 per member. There are 355 licensed trainers in Ireland, although not all are members of the association, so the maximum pay out to Gordon would be around Euro 2,000."

Who pays the six figure sum in legal fees for the court case(s)?
My guess is if it is paid at all, it is probably you, the reader.

The Tetrarch · 24-12-2020 1:12pm

I finished reading it yesterday at 06:00.
If you think you know about racing and breeding this book will tell you how little you know.

You can not bet when you do not know what he horses are on. You can not own a horse, put it in a race, and have a fair chance.

In the USA trainers are suspended for drug offences, but their assistant trainer then runs the stable as if nothing happened.
In Ireland it appears that the authorities operate the same way anglers operate.
If you catch a big fish you immediately release it - "catch and release".

After the White Sox lost the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds, Jackson and seven other White Sox players were accused of accepting $5,000 each (equivalent to $74,000 in 2019) to throw the Series. "Shoeless" Joe Jackson confessed to participating in the fix.
When Jackson left the criminal court building in the custody of a sheriff after telling his story to the grand jury, he found several hundred youngsters, aged from 6 to 16, waiting for a glimpse of their idol.

One child stepped up to the outfielder, and, grabbing his coat sleeve, said:
"It ain't true, is it, Joe?"
"Yes, kid, I'm afraid it is," Jackson replied.
The boys opened a path for the ball player and stood in silence until he passed out of sight.
"Well, I'd never have thought it," sighed the lad.

Tell me it isn't true.
Tell me Irish racing (point to point; hurdles; steeplechases; flat) is drug free (it isn't).

You can take a hair sample from every horse that races, and horses that are sold at auction, and test them for drugs.
Keep the hair samples for ever, and re-test if tests for new drugs are developed.
A hair sample will also tell you approximately when drugs were administered.

Kauto · 26-12-2020 12:11am

The Tetrarch wrote: »

I finished reading it yesterday at 06:00.
If you think you know about racing and breeding this book will tell you how little you know.

You can not bet when you do not know what he horses are on. You can not own a horse, put it in a race, and have a fair chance.

In the USA trainers are suspended for drug offences, but their assistant trainer then runs the stable as if nothing happened.
In Ireland it appears that the authorities operate the same way anglers operate.
If you catch a big fish you immediately release it - "catch and release".

After the White Sox lost the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds, Jackson and seven other White Sox players were accused of accepting $5,000 each (equivalent to $74,000 in 2019) to throw the Series. "Shoeless" Joe Jackson confessed to participating in the fix.
When Jackson left the criminal court building in the custody of a sheriff after telling his story to the grand jury, he found several hundred youngsters, aged from 6 to 16, waiting for a glimpse of their idol.

One child stepped up to the outfielder, and, grabbing his coat sleeve, said:
"It ain't true, is it, Joe?"
"Yes, kid, I'm afraid it is," Jackson replied.
The boys opened a path for the ball player and stood in silence until he passed out of sight.
"Well, I'd never have thought it," sighed the lad.

Tell me it isn't true.
Tell me Irish racing (point to point; hurdles; steeplechases; flat) is drug free (it isn't).

You can take a hair sample from every horse that races, and horses that are sold at auction, and test them for drugs.
Keep the hair samples for ever, and re-test if tests for new drugs are developed.
A hair sample will also tell you approximately when drugs were administered.

If your horse is not on the 'go go Juice' you have no chance. It is expensive for the smaller trainer however.

STB. · 26-12-2020 1:21am

The Tetrarch wrote: »

In The Black horse Is Dying is a nice little story about an Irish trainer.
"His answer to the question of how he came to be in possession of these drugs was in the realm of blaming fairies. He told the court they had been accidentally left in his car at a race meeting by an unnamed man who intended passing them to a vet who has since died. He denied giving any steroids to his horses and could not explain why Stanozolol was found in his training yard."

I have read 204 pages of the 471 page book. Next are the chapters about Ireland.
An interesting comment in the book about the IHRB (Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board, formerly the Turf Club) is nobody outside the club knows who the members of the club are.

The Irish Trainer was named in court reports at the time - Pat Hughes .

His brother was the vet caught with 6 kilos of nitrotain and refused to implicate anyone else because of client confidentiality. It since turned out that the Agriculutural investigators found out that the 6kgs discovered was just one of 24 packages sent, which in total pointed to industrial scale amounts imported from Australia from the same supplier. Somewhere in the region of 225kg according to an article recently published in The Times by David Walsh, famous cycling drug cheats author and journalist.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/questions-must-be-asked-about-whether-irish-racing-takes-doping-seriously-cqc0zk2qq

paddy no 11 · 26-12-2020 6:20pm

Was enough for 5,000 individual doses if I call correctly

You'd have fellas on here creaming their shorts over certain trainers

STB. · 27-12-2020 1:39am

paddy no 11 wrote: »

Was enough for 5,000 individual doses if I call correctly

You'd have fellas on here creaming their shorts over certain trainers

1 kilo is 250 doses. Its 4g of paste in a dose per day.

I don't know what you would do with 225 Kilos of the stuff that David Walsh claimed was imported from Nature Vet Australia in the total orders by Hughes. That's 56,000 doses.

This stuff has a very quick withdrawal period. You probably won't detect it after 2 days.

Lets face it I don't think anyone in the industry wanted widespread usage to be a headline. The number of consignments seized by Customs no doubt pales in comparison to what gets through.

finbarrk · 27-12-2020 3:01am

Denis Coakleys response to David Walsh’s article is excellent. I can’t link it now.

IAMAMORON · 10-01-2021 3:48am

Brian O'Connor wrote an interesting article in the Irish Times this weekend. I tried to read it fully, but in all fairness I have been on the hoop since Thursday night and I am slightly wary of the snowball that is appearing.

Most worryingly for me is the indication that the HRI are terrified of what would happen if they had a good look under the covers.... In fairness that is what worries me most also.

I phucking love Brian O'Connor but having read his piece I can't help feeling that he danced around the truth like a debutant at an underground rave? I get that he might be trying to investigate the truth... but if he recognises that if he steps too far ahead of himself he is culpable to ridicule. It simmers with insipidness.

I am a punter,,, for me I don't really have to concern myself with small stables trying their heart out to get half decent nags across the line to pay the bills.... There lies the problem. Too much wink and elbow language for my liking and if I was sniffing for a bone I know where I might end up scratching the ground like a hound?

I was horrified over the feed scandal during Ark week. My jaw dropped and to be quite frank I still cling to the hope that prudence was being adopted by the connections that matter.

Regrettably this will be smothered by the game. Outsiders and journalists will be placated with conceited untruths and told to " get back in their box", or fear the inevitable ostracisation that the industry demands.

It bestrides the world like a colossus , who are we petty men to walk under its' huge legs and find ourselves in servile fearfulness?

IAMAMORON · 19-01-2021 12:13pm

How come it took 2 years?

https://www.irishracing.com/news?headline=Charles-Byrnes-banned-for-six-months&prid=215123

IAMAMORON · 19-01-2021 12:21pm

Cheltenham Festival Irish winners the last 20 years.

year total
2000 3
2001 0
2002 5
2003 6
2004 4
2005 9
2006 10
2007 5
2008 7
2009 9
2010 7
2011 13
2012 5
2013 14
2014 12
2015 13
2016 13
2017 19
2018 17
2019 14
2020 17

https://juicestorm.com/horse-racing/2020-cheltenham-festival-many-irish-trained-winners/
https://www.independent.ie/sport/horse-racing/cheltenham/irish-trained-winners-in-the-last-10-years-26711583.html
https://www.thejockeyclub.co.uk/cheltenham/events-tickets/the-festival/about-the-event/race-results/2020/

The Tetrarch · 19-01-2021 1:39pm

IAMAMORON wrote: »

How come it took 2 years?
https://www.irishracing.com/news?headline=Charles-Byrnes-banned-for-six-months&prid=215123

The horse was given 100 times the normal dose.
It probably took the horse the two years to come around, and then when asked he could remember nothing.

IAMAMORON · 19-01-2021 1:56pm

The Tetrarch wrote: »

The horse was given 100 times the normal dose.
It probably took the horse the two years to come around, and then when asked he could remember nothing.

While it looks like a thorough enough investigation I cannot help but feel it is tip of the iceberg stuff. I also find it a stretch that they were going to such lengths to lay a horse. It seems like a lot of hassle given some of the reasons I have seen over the years for an underperforming horse.

All in all it seems like they literally threw the book at them to get a conviction, but how come it has taken 2 years and some peripheral heat from a few scribes to bring up the issue?

The only logic I can find in this circumstance is that the horse was a total machine they were hoping to lob into a big handicap down the line. That being the case they may have felt that sedating him would have taken less focus off any jockey faffing around the back of the field with him. I still think they have gone to an extreme to pull a horse. Alternatively it may have been the only way the HRI could embellish their prosecution, insofar as by proving that they were laying the horse they were offering a counterargument to the defense that the horse was tampered with by a 3rd party?

Am I missing a trick here? Is it possible that sedating a horse with a certain dose actually improve performance? Could it be that they got the dose wrong? Then when they realised this prerace they layed the phuck out of it in a panic?

Francie Barrett · 19-01-2021 2:42pm

The Tetrarch wrote: »

The horse was given 100 times the normal dose.
It probably took the horse the two years to come around, and then when asked he could remember nothing.

A notorious cheating rogue, basically let off with a slap on the wrist. That full entire report is a must-read and completely damning.

Kauto · 19-01-2021 2:46pm

Poor Charles has nothing on the green and gold. The biggest scurge on racing by a long way.

famagusta · 19-01-2021 2:53pm

The Tetrarch wrote: »

The horse was given 100 times the normal dose.

You're wrong there chief, read it again, the horse would prob be dead with that dose

Odelay · 19-01-2021 2:59pm

The Tetrarch wrote: »

The horse was given 100 times the normal dose.
It probably took the horse the two years to come around, and then when asked he could remember nothing.

Not 100 times the normal dose. He had 100 times the agreed minimum detection level.

finbarrk · 19-01-2021 3:08pm

I read 'The Black Horse is dying'. It's good in fairness.

Francie Barrett · 19-01-2021 3:22pm

Did anyone else laugh at this bit?

Mr Buckley added that all three of these lay bets had been traced through the Betfair exchange to the same account number.These lay bets were initially placed with a limited liability company, which placed them in turn with Betfair, on what appeared to be a combined basis with other such bets. The Committee was surprised to hear that such a mechanism is possible, as it could hinder identification of the possible beneficiaries of lay betting. Mr Buckley identified an individual known to be associated with the combined account. He is based in a distant part of the world and was said to be associated with match fixing and associated betting in connection with other sports. There is no evidence to connect Mr Byrnes with these betting patterns, but they are part of the full and relevant context to the events of 18 October 2018 at Tramore and informed the subsequent investigation into those events.

chancer007 · 19-01-2021 3:23pm

finbarrk wrote: »

I read 'The Black Horse is dying'. It's good in fairness.

1/2 way through it. Interesting read so far about Northern Dancer & who were the big players back in the 70/80s. Vincent O'Brien was some trainer.

IAMAMORON · 19-01-2021 3:28pm

Francie Barrett wrote: »

Did anyone else laugh at this bit?

It raised my eyebrows.. but I am not that surprised.

What I don't understand however is the lengths that the stable has gone to pull the horse? You only have to see the shight going on in Dundalk every Friday night if you were planning a few lays for a few quid.

It just seems like a lot to be doing to make maybe 3 grand? Yet it is being hyped up like some sort of an international conspiracy?

It is head scratching, am I missing something?

The Tetrarch · 19-01-2021 4:37pm

IAMAMORON wrote: »

It raised my eyebrows.. but I am not that surprised.
What I don't understand however is the lengths that the stable has gone to pull the horse? You only have to see the shight going on in Dundalk every Friday night if you were planning a few lays for a few quid.
It just seems like a lot to be doing to make maybe 3 grand? Yet it is being hyped up like some sort of an international conspiracy?
It is head scratching, am I missing something?

We heard about Betfair. Perhaps there was other betting on the other side of the world on the favourite, or other lays.
The favourite won. There are other ways of slowing horses. Have you read Monsieur X?
This might just be the tip of the dung heap.

The Black Horse Inside Coolmore

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