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Change the name from Nickie Hemderson to ,say, Barney Curley. Barney is a good and charitable person who helps the poor and homeless in third world countries. So what will the punishment be for a willing, and admitted, administration of a forbidden substance to his horse before a race?
I am in the "let’s wait to see what happens first" camp.
I cannot believe, however, that the letter from Michael Kerr-Dineen in today’s Racing Post will have done Henderson’s cause any good whatsoever.
I don’t know enough about the case to have a strong view as to what should happen, but I was astonished the RP chose to publish Kerr-Dineen’s letter. How on earth he can claim that "most unbiased people" would agree that Henderson didn’t breach rule 200 is beyond me. How would he know?
Graham Cunningham’s point on RUK was particularly relevant – we cannot have a situation whereby Henderson gets a reduced punishment because he is "good bloke" or does work for charity…
Mr Kerr-Dineen did point out that Nicky Henderson shouldn’t plead guilty to something that didn’t happen – he must have missed the bit about the failed drugs test.
Rule 200 is the one about horses failing dope tests I presume – of which Nicky Henderson had one which failed a dope test, seems rather straight forward to me.
Barney is a good and charitable person who helps the poor
John McCrirrick for starters, does anyone know the story?
Top bloke Barney, worked the system and now changing the lives of people in Africa for the better, beyond any of us in the this country could even begin to understand.
I know it’s slightly different, but in human sports – if you are found with traces of banned performance enhancing susbstances – you have to explain how they got there – and are usually banned for 2 years.
I honestly can’t believe Nicky Henderson would do anything so foolish – it certainly is a head scratcher!Andy, as far as I understand the rules. It is not illegal to train any horses on the substance concerned, but it is against the rules for a horses to compete in a race on the drugs.
In all likelyhood Henderson has simply got his timings wrongs.
I’d still throw the book at him tho, zero tolerance is the only way for the intregity of the sport.
As far as I am concerned the ‘drugs’ rules are there to protect racing from two dangers –
1. The danger that prohibitive substances are deliberately used by people consciously cheating.
2. The danger that poor management by trainers results in horses running with prohibited substances in their system.Arguably, if you are a trainer and you can’t manage your drug administration processes then you are a risk to the sport and the sport can take measures to ‘manage’ you.
That said, Henderson has shown that he has a long track record of being an exemplary trainer , excellent at managing all aspects of the operation, and that should be mitigation which should, I believe, lead to him being given the most lenient sentence possible (on this occasion).
out of curiosity, does anyone know if the kind of failure in medication record-keeping highlighted here is such as, from next Wednesday, would also fall foul of the Horse Passport Regulations 2009 (which are a bit wider than just the "my horse is not for eating" declaration):
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/Lex … 032:EN:PDF
http://www.defra.gov.uk/news/2009/090612d.htm
in other words, are there drugs commonly given to racehorses which would be potentially harmful to humans were they to enter the food chain, hence needing recording under those general non-BHA rules ?
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