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This is prompted by the Jim Best thread and his four-year ban. I get the feeling that this is in effect close to a lifetime ban, as it’s hard to see how he can set back up in business with a steady flow of owners from 2020 on.
My question is, do any forumites know of any trainers resuming their careers after lengthy bans?
Mike
just off on a slight tangent i think any trainer/jockey found cheating should be banned for life.
I am of the same opinion with drug cheats with in sport.In the darkest recesses of my rapidly ageing memory, I seem to recall a Doncaster trainer named Bob Ward who got himself warned off sometime in the 1960s, but came back to train a few winners in the 1970s.
I’m hoping someone can add to this, or put me right if I am in error.
Vincent O’Brien was warned off for 18 months.
He came back and trained a few winners as well.
Karl Burke was banned for twelve months a while back I think and he is training now.
I can offer you John Manners, banned for three years in 1989 after Voices Of Spring won a point-to-point at Siddington without any weights in his cloth.
Defiant and irreverent as ever, he’d subsequently name a horse Spambruco after the three officials who banned him – meat baron Lord Vestey (spam), Bruce Hobbs (Bru) and Robert Waley-Cohen (Co).
gc
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
Vincent O’Brien was warned off for 18 months.
He came back and trained a few winners as well.
I didn’t know this and found this piece in O’Brien’s obituary from The Graun back in 2009:
But 18 months later, O’Brien’s career was in ruins. A dope test on a three-year-old colt called Chamour, following a race at the Curragh worth £202, proved positive for a minuscule amount of an amphetamine derivative, and O’Brien was “warned off” the turf, and ordered to move out of his house if the stables were to remain operational.
O’Brien’s brother Phonsie took over the licence at Ballydoyle, assisted by his other brother Dermot. When Chamour won the Irish Derby three months later, racegoers surrounded the weighing room chanting: “We want Vincent”. Later, his 18-month suspension was reduced to 12 months; the rules were altered; and O’Brien, who had asserted his innocence, was vindicated.
Playing the ‘relative card’ seems a good way of bypassing a ban. Doesn’t Best have a brother..?
Mike
I can offer you John Manners, banned for three years in 1989 after Voices Of Spring won a point-to-point at Siddington without any weights in his cloth.
Defiant and irreverent as ever, he’d subsequently name a horse Spambruco after the three officials who banned him – meat baron Lord Vestey (spam), Bruce Hobbs (Bru) and Robert Waley-Cohen (Co).
Ha! They did break the mould there, for sure!
Manners had several skirmishes with officialdom. He was fined £50 by the Cheltenham stewards in 1982 after enthusiasm got the better of him and he jumped over the running rails and pursued Knight Of Love, his winner, up the run-in, tossing his trilby in the air.
Mike
More recently, both David Flood (administering bute in the racecourse stables) and Mick Quinn (animal welfare, neglecting a horse out in a paddock), have returned to training after serving two year bans, although neither tends to seek (or get) the publicity that once attended their careers.
Playing the ‘relative card’ seems a good way of bypassing a ban. Doesn’t Best have a brother..?
Mike
Isn’t that the “trick” the aforementioned Karl Burke used with his missus taking up the reigns as it were?
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