BHA’s Laura Young ban looks watered down
A horse failing a drugs test is hardly earth-shattering news. It can happen for a variety of reasons from a contaminated batch of feed to something more nefarious.
There was even the case of the horse who took a bite out his lad’s Mars bar a few hours before he won a race. The post-race urine sample lit up when lit like a Christmas tree when it was analysed. The said confectionary may well “help you work, rest and play” but is a definite no-no when it comes to horseracing.
However, the six-month ban handed out by the BHA to trainer Laura Young yesterday highlighted something which the sport should be taking very seriously indeed.
The case centred on a horse called Strategic Plan, who won a selling handicap hurdle at Plumpton on March 23rd last year, and who tested positive for a prohibited substance called tranexamic acid, an anti-bleeding agent, which has hit the headlines before.
Decades of breeding from American stock, whose performances may have been drug-assisted because those substances are permissible under that racing jurisdiction, leaves open to question whether horses with genetic defects have passed those down the bloodline? It also begs the question of whether zero-tolerance is still workable from a welfare perspective?
British racing received a jolt last summer when Nicky Henderson was fined £40,000 and banned from making entries for three months after one of his horses, Moonlit Path, tested positive for transemic acid.
It was an open-and-shut case in essence but the shades of grey made for some uncomfortable thoughts. Horses that are “bleeders” have a problem involving the breaking blood vessels that causes the blood to enter the lungs. In the worst cases the effect is of the animal choking, almost drowning while trying to gallop. Some research on the subject suggest that as many as 90% of Thoroughbreds now have some level of this problem.
There is a tacit acceptance of this within the Rules of racing because it is permissible to train horses on anti-bleeding medication provided that nothing shows up on a race-day analysis. So it’s ok behind closed doors because no-one will know the difference. Except of course the horse, who can be lulled into a false sense of security until the race, when the exertion of competition – without medication aid – leaves the horse again vulnerable to the problem.
Many observers believed that while Henderson had breached the Rules, he did it primarily with the welfare of his horse in mind. However, there was an element of the Young case that is particularly distasteful – or at least should be.
In the course of their investigation, the BHA discovered that Young had deprived Strategic Plan of any water for 52 hours before the race. This was in the hope it would minimise the prospects of the horse bleeding. The hope had been that this form of barbarity had been condemned to the past about the same time that the medical profession had concluded that the application of leeches was not the wonder cure-all.
Having concluded that the source of the tranexamic acid had not been established, the BHA fined Young £1,000 for that breach but decided that the welfare issues warranted action. Aside from the ban – which April 23rd and runs until October 22nd inclusive - Young has agreed to attend a course of re-education on equine husbandry.
Commenting on the outcome of the hearing, Professor Tim Morris, the BHA's director of Equine Science and Welfare, said: "Each of the charges Mrs Young faced were serious breaches of the Rules of Racing. However, the welfare charges were, in my view, particularly serious.
"The welfare of horses - whether in training or when racing - is of paramount importance to the BHA, and it will not countenance conduct on the part of any licensed individual which compromises or potentially compromises the welfare of horses.
"In light of the acceptance by Mrs Young on the welfare charges and the imposition of the sanction of a substantial period of disqualification with conditions on Mrs Young in respect of those charges in relation to the events around the running of Strategic Plan, the BHA did not pursue the charge of administering a prohibited substance as a matter of pragmatism."
Quite whether a six-month suspension equates to “a substantial period of disqualification” is open to debate but for those who will believe that the horse came to no real harm should try abstaining for liquids for two days and then running a couple of miles. Young’s actions amounted to calculated cruelty that brings into question if she should ever be allowed to hold a licence again.
Racing has done much to clean up its act in the last 10 years in terms of welfare issues. Much of this has been done in conjunction with the RSPCA but there are still pressure groups that would have the sport banned in a heartbeat and this story simply hands them the ammunition.
The BHA has been looking to tighten up its regulations regarding the ability of owners to pass a “fit and proper persons” criteria. The obvious use of this background check would be to keep out those who might corrupt the sport.
They could do far worse than start with Laura Young.
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