he coincidence was beyond unexpected. On Tuesday a report into alleged doping in Irish horse racing by a joint committee of the Oireachtas was released in Dublin. Four months before, members of the committee had heard evidence from leading figures in the sport and although their report highlighted new measures that should be implemented, the overall conclusion was that the sport’s regulatory authority, the Irish Horse Racing Board (IHRB), was doing a good job.
Jackie Cahill, chairman of the joint committee, delivered the soundbite that would become the headline. “We’re happy that the testing standards in Irish racing are of the highest possible international standards,” he said.
The 34-page report had come about because the leading trainer Jim Bolger had said doping was “the No 1 problem in Irish racing”. Cahill’s report, said a journalist from the Racing Post, had “effectively invalidated” Bolger’s allegations.
At the same time that the report was released, a team of Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine (DAFM) investigators, supported by local gardai officers, turned up at a Leinster stud. Acting on intelligence, the investigators were looking for a British resident.
The wanted individual, who cannot be named for legal reasons, describes himself as an equine physical consultant and works with both thoroughbreds and other sports horses. He also describes himself as a “vet-physio”, although he is not qualified in veterinary science. Department of Agriculture officials knew that he held a clinic at the stud every second week, which was popular with racehorse trainers and those involved in equestrian sport. He had a reputation — for the word was that he was good with horses that had physical problems.
The investigators arrived at the stud at about 10am and told the man that they had come to carry out a search of the house and yard. They would end up taking away his computer and mobile phone, in addition to a number of pharmaceutical substances.
Intelligence had been provided to the authorities by someone who had, over a number of weeks, monitored the flow of equine traffic to the clinic. From the names on the horse boxes and the amount of traffic in and out of the stud, it was clear that many believed in the man’s methods.
According to the source, more than 60 different horse boxes had visited over the course of a few weeks. They came from as far away as Northern Ireland.
The trainer Liam Burke had come from Mallow in County Cork on Tuesday morning. It was, he told me, just his bad luck to have to call into the stud at the wrong time.
“I was on my way to Fairyhouse to run a horse and was dropping off a horse to the stud for a friend of mine, who’s a handler,” he said.
“I was only doing a favour for a friend and I was just unlucky to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was never in that yard until the other day. That vet has never treated any of my horses, at least not in recent times.
“I got there at 12.20, people had been there for an hour at that stage. I just drove in and they held me there. The Turf Club vet [Dr Lynn Hillyer] was there and she wouldn’t allow me to run my horse at Fairyhouse. I was just being a good Samaritan and that’s what happened.”
Ted Walsh was the other trainer who turned up with a horse to be treated. “I went down to get a horse scanned and lasered,” he said. “I got Seabass done ten years ago, [but] I wouldn’t go to him too often, maybe once in a blue moon.
“I drove in past the first yard, into the second yard and everybody was standing around his car. A garda came up to me whom I knew and he said to me, ‘I have to ask you your name.’ I said, ‘Grand, what’s wrong?’ He said they were investigating if there was contraband in the place, unlicensed drugs or remedies.
“I was there for a couple of hours. After an hour I asked if I could go. They said no, so I went back and waited in the horse box. Lynn Hillyer said she wanted to blood-test all the horses and she then took four samples of blood and a hair sample from my horse.
“After doing that she said, ‘You can go home now Ted,’ and I drove off, three hours after I’d turned up.”
As well as local intelligence, it is believed that the FBI had tipped off Irish authorities about a consignment of veterinary products en route to Dublin airport and this information led to Tuesday morning’s raid in Leinster.
Afterwards the Department of Agriculture issued a statement in which it spoke of “an operation led by DAFM and the gardai with IHRB officers in attendance, which led to a seizure of animal remedies”.
The question is, precisely what kind of animal remedies? One source has told me that there is a belief within the investigation that when the products taken from the yard are analysed, the story will only become bigger.
For Irish horse racing, the stakes are high. If the DAFM investigation results in charges, Bolger’s belief that there is a doping culture within the sport becomes ever more difficult to ignore.
As for Cahill, and the report that speaks of the “highest possible international standards” of drug-testing — well, they could have picked a better day to release that.
