Jim Bolger claims he knows who the drug cheats
Paul Kimmage
There will be a Lance Armstrong in Irish racing, claims Jim Bolger, and he knows who the drug cheats are
The raids on the premises of (John) Hughes and (Philip) Fenton took place within 15 days of each other in January and February 2012. They showed that Irish racing had a serious problem with illegal performance-enhancing drugs. Though Fenton would be treated more severely by the courts, the Hughes case was more serious.
As a vet . . . John Hughes had a stable pass and was a licensed person at Irish race meetings. Investigations by the Department of Agriculture established that he had been dealing with a company called Nature Vet, based in Australia, and between 2002 and 2012 he had bought 250kg of Nitrotain from that company.
Nitrotain, which contains ethylestrenol, is a particularly potent anabolic steroid and the quantity Hughes had bought from Nature Vet was sufficient for 62,500 individual doses . . . The investigation into Hughes showed that illegal drugs have been a part of the sport for at least a decade.
David Walsh,
The Sunday Times,
November 30, 2014
Six months ago, a couple of days after his gorgeous chestnut colt, Mac Swiney, had won a Group 1 race at Doncaster, Jim Bolger gave an interview to Daragh Ó Conchúir for The Irish Field . The timing was fortuitous.
“He had had a very quiet spell, then Mac Swiney won at Doncaster, and Poetic Flare had won the week before,” the journalist says. “It was maybe my third (big) interview with Jim and he always gives an opinion, but I wasn’t expecting this. It was at the end of the conversation and I think I said, ‘Is there anything more you want to say?’ It was a complete fluke.”
What Bolger said sent a storm through racing that would rage for months. Here’s the report the next day, Sunday October 31, in the Racing Post :
“Jim Bolger has said the number one problem in Irish racing is drug cheats, who are stopping the sport from being a level playing field, and has called on the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board to introduce more hair testing with immediate effect.
“The trainer, who stole the show last Saturday by sending out Mac Swiney to win the Vertem Futurity Trophy at Doncaster, has stressed he would be 100pc happy for his own horses to be hair tested at any time.
“Bolger said: ‘I have knowledge of problems and I would like to see the IHRB stepping up to the plate. There needs to be more rigorous testing, but action has to happen after that testing has taken place. I’m inclined to think we have had instances in the past where action wasn’t taken when it should have been.’”
A few days later, we requested an interview with the trainer. A month after that, we tried again. On Tuesday, we spent four hours with Bolger at his home in Coolcullen. It started with a visit to Mac Swiney — the winner of the Irish 2,000 Guineas — in box number one of the yard.
Paul Kimmage: OK, Jim, let’s take it from the top. It’s the last week of October and a couple of days after Mac Swiney wins at Doncaster, you give an interview to Daragh Ó Conchúir at The Irish Field : “I am concerned with the lack of policing in racing. It’s not up to the mark. It’s not up to scratch . . . It is not a level playing pitch at the moment.”
Jim Bolger: I just threw it out there. He was sitting the same as you are now. I didn’t know how he was going to use it.
PK: You knew what you were doing. You’re no fool.
JB: Sometimes
PK: You knew this was going to cause an absolute shitstorm.
JB: Hmmm.
PK: You’re 79 years old. Why take that on at this stage of your life?
JB: It would be like you coming down the Champs-Elysees on a Sunday in July, knowing that the fellow in front of you is full of dope and you’re going to be second. And on the other side of the podium. That’s not easy to take. And if you’re half a man, you’re going to stand up for yourself. So I’m standing up for myself, and for the trainers who are playing the game straight . . .
PK: You’re standing up alone. You’re not getting much support.
JB: Well, I can understand that because a lot of trainers are terrified of authority. They never express an opinion on anything, and that’s their prerogative — they somehow want an easy life. But as soon as they realise what’s happening to them, I think they will be talking . . .
PK: You don’t think they realise what’s happening?
JB: Some may not, and others still haven’t plucked up the courage.
PK: How long have you realised there was a problem?
JB: I’ve been very slow on this one; I’d say it’s going on for 20 years, ever since steroids became well known. Before that, it was just a bit of sodium bicarbonate, but then the steroids came along. Now they weren’t used extensively, but they were used by some individuals.
PK: The Hughes case, the Nitrotain, was in 2012.
JB: Yeah. And in the 10 years before that [John Hughes] brought in a quarter tonne of the stuff.
PK: Who was using it?
JB: Yeah, well that’s (the question).
PK: Why weren’t you jumping up and down when Hughes was caught?
JB: There are only certain windows that I will get; and if you’re not going well and you say something, it will be ignored. I had an audience because I had won the Vertem Futurity with Mac Swiney and was asked for that interview. I was always going to raise it.
PK: The timeline was interesting. It was a few weeks after the contaminated feed story and the fact that a French lab was picking up traces of a steroid (Zilpaterol) that wasn’t being detected here. Was that part of it?
JB: It was more a question of having an audience.
PK: Having won with Mac Swiney?
JB: Yeah.
PK: Was there any blowback? Did anyone call you about it?
JB: No, there was just a few swipes in interviews on television. Nobody spoke to me directly about it.
PK: Six weeks later, Brian O’Connor wrote an interesting column in The Irish Times : ‘Jim Bolger’s incendiary statements should shake racing to its foundations’. Here’s the opening paragraph: “It’s six weeks since Jim Bolger declared drugs to be Irish racing’s number one problem. He doesn’t believe there’s a level playing field. These are incendiary statements from one of the sport’s grandees and should shake racing to its foundations.” And that’s the point, isn’t it? Because it doesn’t.
JB: Hmmm.
PK: The sport has its head in the sand: ‘Say nothing and it will blow over.’
JB: Yeah.
PK: Here’s another paragraph from the O’Connor piece: “If Bolger’s aim was to generate a conversation about drug testing in racing, then it isn’t a very public one. Colleagues of his passed the buck to the Trainers’ Association — of which Bolger too is a member — and it declined to comment. Even privately there is reluctance to discuss this . . . Bolger might be off a few Christmas card lists this year.” Have you had any support?
JB: Very little, but I can understand that because of the fear factor with the ruling body. Trainers don’t want to stick their heads above the parapet.
PK: Aidan O’Brien did.
JB: When he was asked.
PK: Yeah, when he was asked.
JB: And do you have his reply?
PK: He said he didn’t agree with you, and that he hadn’t spoken to anyone in racing who thought differently. I’ve scribbled it down here: “Jim is entitled to his opinion. It’s very clean, and everyone is doing a very good job.”
JB: I think he also said I should name names.
PK: Yes, he did.
JB: I’m not that big a fool! I don’t travel to Dublin very often, but I don’t want to be going up every day for three weeks to the High Court.
PK: Yeah, O’Connor made that point: “Invariably, there were a few grumbles that he shouldn’t toss around accusations without backing them up. But since naming names in such circumstances is a high-speed shortcut to the High Court, it’s a pretty empty demand.”
JB: (smiles) But they can rest assured I know who they are; like, if I had responsibility for rooting out cheats, I’d have them rooted out in six months.
PK: How?
JB: Because I know who they are.
PK: Lynn Hillyer (the IHRB chief veterinary officer and head of anti-doping) told The Examiner recently that they have been working with you for some time on the issue.
JB: I had had one meeting before ( The Irish Field interview) and one after it.
PK: With Hillyer?
JB: Yes.
PK: On what needed to be done?
JB: Yes.
PK: You laid it out for her?
JB: Yes, but I didn’t name names.
PK: But you laid out the issues and how they should be addressed?
JB: Yes.
PK: How was that received?
JB: She seemed to receive it pretty well; I think she would be keen to do something, but I’m not sure she has the back-up. I mean, when you get the chief executive saying that there is no problem, and (in the next breath) saying they are taking on extra (anti-doping) staff. Why do they need extra staff if there’s no problem there? And, by the way, it was all supposed to be confidential.
PK: What was?
JB: The meetings and the conversations, but it suited them to break that confidence because it was known at that stage that they were doing precious little about it. And her defence was: ‘Oh, we’ve had meetings with him and we’re making progress.’ But as far as I was concerned, and I had made it quite clear, the meetings were confidential.
PK: I would imagine when that happened, and the confidence was broken, there was a pretty stern phone call?
JB: Well, at that stage, I was hoping that we could have further dialogue, which didn’t happen. But what progress have they made? I haven’t seen much evidence that there is anything happening.
PK: How do you gauge progress?
JB: When someone gets caught. I mean, that’s what has to happen.
PK: Here’s another question: John Hughes didn’t live too far from here.
JB: He’s only down the road. I know him very well.
PK: So why wouldn’t you?
JB: Why wouldn’t I?
PK: Yeah, why wouldn’t you dope your horses? Philip Fenton is back training again. The penalties for using prohibited substances are pretty laughable.
JB: I wouldn’t do it because it’s cheating, and I’m not a cheat. I know there’s an attitude in racing that it’s all about winners, fair means or foul, but I think there has to be an element of decency in the whole thing. You have to have some self-respect. And I know I have right on my side.
PK: Sure.
JB: It all goes back to the quarter tonne of Nitrotain. Where did it go? Philip (Fenton) did get a fair old suspension, but he could well have been the sacrificial lamb. And the reason I don’t have any confidence in the regulator is because they must have known that at the time. They may also, I understand, have had a list (of other trainers) and it wasn’t followed up on.
PK: You’ve introduced me to Mac Swiney and the clump out of his mane?
JB: (smiles) Yeah, a victim of my own invention.
PK: So you’ve no faith in all the trumpeting about hair testing?
JB: I’m not sure they’re very serious about it. The samples might have been taken but if they were tested properly, they would have had results by now.
PK: So it’s your sense that . . .
JB: There’s a problem, and I’ve had great support from my staff who know that I am one hundred and one per cent right. And they know more about it than I do, because they are right in the mix.
PK: What do you mean?
JB: They have contact with other stable staff. They are closer to the coalface than I am.
PK: I’m seeing a lot of parallels with pro cycling here.
JB: Well, there will be a Lance Armstrong in Irish racing.
PK: There will?
JB: There will.
PK: You say that with certainty.
JB: Yes.
PK: But you’ve just said the IHRB are not serious about it?
JB: When it is recognised that there is a need to really tackle this problem, I don’t think the IHRB will be in control. I think all of the European racing bodies should now invite Usada (United States Anti-Doping Agency) to deal with this.
PK: As they’ve done in the US?
JB: Yes.
PK: What about the perception — and I’m sure it’s been levelled at you — that by highlighting all this you are diminishing or damaging racing?
JB: I agree, I am, but in the short term. But in the long term — to use an expression I hate — after the swamp is drained, things will be much healthier. And it’s not for me, because I’ll be gone at that stage.
PK: This is a difficult stance you’ve taken, something you’ve never had a problem with, but what about your family? Jackie (wife)? Una (daughter)? Kevin (son-in-law)? Have you had any conversations about it with them?
JB: I’ve discussed it with them all, and with my staff as well, and it comes back to the same thing. When you have right on your side you have nothing to fear.
Paul Kimmage
There will be a Lance Armstrong in Irish racing, claims Jim Bolger, and he knows who the drug cheats are
The raids on the premises of (John) Hughes and (Philip) Fenton took place within 15 days of each other in January and February 2012. They showed that Irish racing had a serious problem with illegal performance-enhancing drugs. Though Fenton would be treated more severely by the courts, the Hughes case was more serious.
As a vet . . . John Hughes had a stable pass and was a licensed person at Irish race meetings. Investigations by the Department of Agriculture established that he had been dealing with a company called Nature Vet, based in Australia, and between 2002 and 2012 he had bought 250kg of Nitrotain from that company.
Nitrotain, which contains ethylestrenol, is a particularly potent anabolic steroid and the quantity Hughes had bought from Nature Vet was sufficient for 62,500 individual doses . . . The investigation into Hughes showed that illegal drugs have been a part of the sport for at least a decade.
David Walsh,
The Sunday Times,
November 30, 2014
Six months ago, a couple of days after his gorgeous chestnut colt, Mac Swiney, had won a Group 1 race at Doncaster, Jim Bolger gave an interview to Daragh Ó Conchúir for The Irish Field . The timing was fortuitous.
“He had had a very quiet spell, then Mac Swiney won at Doncaster, and Poetic Flare had won the week before,” the journalist says. “It was maybe my third (big) interview with Jim and he always gives an opinion, but I wasn’t expecting this. It was at the end of the conversation and I think I said, ‘Is there anything more you want to say?’ It was a complete fluke.”
What Bolger said sent a storm through racing that would rage for months. Here’s the report the next day, Sunday October 31, in the Racing Post :
“Jim Bolger has said the number one problem in Irish racing is drug cheats, who are stopping the sport from being a level playing field, and has called on the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board to introduce more hair testing with immediate effect.
“The trainer, who stole the show last Saturday by sending out Mac Swiney to win the Vertem Futurity Trophy at Doncaster, has stressed he would be 100pc happy for his own horses to be hair tested at any time.
“Bolger said: ‘I have knowledge of problems and I would like to see the IHRB stepping up to the plate. There needs to be more rigorous testing, but action has to happen after that testing has taken place. I’m inclined to think we have had instances in the past where action wasn’t taken when it should have been.’”
A few days later, we requested an interview with the trainer. A month after that, we tried again. On Tuesday, we spent four hours with Bolger at his home in Coolcullen. It started with a visit to Mac Swiney — the winner of the Irish 2,000 Guineas — in box number one of the yard.
Paul Kimmage: OK, Jim, let’s take it from the top. It’s the last week of October and a couple of days after Mac Swiney wins at Doncaster, you give an interview to Daragh Ó Conchúir at The Irish Field : “I am concerned with the lack of policing in racing. It’s not up to the mark. It’s not up to scratch . . . It is not a level playing pitch at the moment.”
Jim Bolger: I just threw it out there. He was sitting the same as you are now. I didn’t know how he was going to use it.
PK: You knew what you were doing. You’re no fool.
JB: Sometimes
PK: You knew this was going to cause an absolute shitstorm.
JB: Hmmm.
PK: You’re 79 years old. Why take that on at this stage of your life?
JB: It would be like you coming down the Champs-Elysees on a Sunday in July, knowing that the fellow in front of you is full of dope and you’re going to be second. And on the other side of the podium. That’s not easy to take. And if you’re half a man, you’re going to stand up for yourself. So I’m standing up for myself, and for the trainers who are playing the game straight . . .
PK: You’re standing up alone. You’re not getting much support.
JB: Well, I can understand that because a lot of trainers are terrified of authority. They never express an opinion on anything, and that’s their prerogative — they somehow want an easy life. But as soon as they realise what’s happening to them, I think they will be talking . . .
PK: You don’t think they realise what’s happening?
JB: Some may not, and others still haven’t plucked up the courage.
PK: How long have you realised there was a problem?
JB: I’ve been very slow on this one; I’d say it’s going on for 20 years, ever since steroids became well known. Before that, it was just a bit of sodium bicarbonate, but then the steroids came along. Now they weren’t used extensively, but they were used by some individuals.
PK: The Hughes case, the Nitrotain, was in 2012.
JB: Yeah. And in the 10 years before that [John Hughes] brought in a quarter tonne of the stuff.
PK: Who was using it?
JB: Yeah, well that’s (the question).
PK: Why weren’t you jumping up and down when Hughes was caught?
JB: There are only certain windows that I will get; and if you’re not going well and you say something, it will be ignored. I had an audience because I had won the Vertem Futurity with Mac Swiney and was asked for that interview. I was always going to raise it.
PK: The timeline was interesting. It was a few weeks after the contaminated feed story and the fact that a French lab was picking up traces of a steroid (Zilpaterol) that wasn’t being detected here. Was that part of it?
JB: It was more a question of having an audience.
PK: Having won with Mac Swiney?
JB: Yeah.
PK: Was there any blowback? Did anyone call you about it?
JB: No, there was just a few swipes in interviews on television. Nobody spoke to me directly about it.
PK: Six weeks later, Brian O’Connor wrote an interesting column in The Irish Times : ‘Jim Bolger’s incendiary statements should shake racing to its foundations’. Here’s the opening paragraph: “It’s six weeks since Jim Bolger declared drugs to be Irish racing’s number one problem. He doesn’t believe there’s a level playing field. These are incendiary statements from one of the sport’s grandees and should shake racing to its foundations.” And that’s the point, isn’t it? Because it doesn’t.
JB: Hmmm.
PK: The sport has its head in the sand: ‘Say nothing and it will blow over.’
JB: Yeah.
PK: Here’s another paragraph from the O’Connor piece: “If Bolger’s aim was to generate a conversation about drug testing in racing, then it isn’t a very public one. Colleagues of his passed the buck to the Trainers’ Association — of which Bolger too is a member — and it declined to comment. Even privately there is reluctance to discuss this . . . Bolger might be off a few Christmas card lists this year.” Have you had any support?
JB: Very little, but I can understand that because of the fear factor with the ruling body. Trainers don’t want to stick their heads above the parapet.
PK: Aidan O’Brien did.
JB: When he was asked.
PK: Yeah, when he was asked.
JB: And do you have his reply?
PK: He said he didn’t agree with you, and that he hadn’t spoken to anyone in racing who thought differently. I’ve scribbled it down here: “Jim is entitled to his opinion. It’s very clean, and everyone is doing a very good job.”
JB: I think he also said I should name names.
PK: Yes, he did.
JB: I’m not that big a fool! I don’t travel to Dublin very often, but I don’t want to be going up every day for three weeks to the High Court.
PK: Yeah, O’Connor made that point: “Invariably, there were a few grumbles that he shouldn’t toss around accusations without backing them up. But since naming names in such circumstances is a high-speed shortcut to the High Court, it’s a pretty empty demand.”
JB: (smiles) But they can rest assured I know who they are; like, if I had responsibility for rooting out cheats, I’d have them rooted out in six months.
PK: How?
JB: Because I know who they are.
PK: Lynn Hillyer (the IHRB chief veterinary officer and head of anti-doping) told The Examiner recently that they have been working with you for some time on the issue.
JB: I had had one meeting before ( The Irish Field interview) and one after it.
PK: With Hillyer?
JB: Yes.
PK: On what needed to be done?
JB: Yes.
PK: You laid it out for her?
JB: Yes, but I didn’t name names.
PK: But you laid out the issues and how they should be addressed?
JB: Yes.
PK: How was that received?
JB: She seemed to receive it pretty well; I think she would be keen to do something, but I’m not sure she has the back-up. I mean, when you get the chief executive saying that there is no problem, and (in the next breath) saying they are taking on extra (anti-doping) staff. Why do they need extra staff if there’s no problem there? And, by the way, it was all supposed to be confidential.
PK: What was?
JB: The meetings and the conversations, but it suited them to break that confidence because it was known at that stage that they were doing precious little about it. And her defence was: ‘Oh, we’ve had meetings with him and we’re making progress.’ But as far as I was concerned, and I had made it quite clear, the meetings were confidential.
PK: I would imagine when that happened, and the confidence was broken, there was a pretty stern phone call?
JB: Well, at that stage, I was hoping that we could have further dialogue, which didn’t happen. But what progress have they made? I haven’t seen much evidence that there is anything happening.
PK: How do you gauge progress?
JB: When someone gets caught. I mean, that’s what has to happen.
PK: Here’s another question: John Hughes didn’t live too far from here.
JB: He’s only down the road. I know him very well.
PK: So why wouldn’t you?
JB: Why wouldn’t I?
PK: Yeah, why wouldn’t you dope your horses? Philip Fenton is back training again. The penalties for using prohibited substances are pretty laughable.
JB: I wouldn’t do it because it’s cheating, and I’m not a cheat. I know there’s an attitude in racing that it’s all about winners, fair means or foul, but I think there has to be an element of decency in the whole thing. You have to have some self-respect. And I know I have right on my side.
PK: Sure.
JB: It all goes back to the quarter tonne of Nitrotain. Where did it go? Philip (Fenton) did get a fair old suspension, but he could well have been the sacrificial lamb. And the reason I don’t have any confidence in the regulator is because they must have known that at the time. They may also, I understand, have had a list (of other trainers) and it wasn’t followed up on.
PK: You’ve introduced me to Mac Swiney and the clump out of his mane?
JB: (smiles) Yeah, a victim of my own invention.
PK: So you’ve no faith in all the trumpeting about hair testing?
JB: I’m not sure they’re very serious about it. The samples might have been taken but if they were tested properly, they would have had results by now.
PK: So it’s your sense that . . .
JB: There’s a problem, and I’ve had great support from my staff who know that I am one hundred and one per cent right. And they know more about it than I do, because they are right in the mix.
PK: What do you mean?
JB: They have contact with other stable staff. They are closer to the coalface than I am.
PK: I’m seeing a lot of parallels with pro cycling here.
JB: Well, there will be a Lance Armstrong in Irish racing.
PK: There will?
JB: There will.
PK: You say that with certainty.
JB: Yes.
PK: But you’ve just said the IHRB are not serious about it?
JB: When it is recognised that there is a need to really tackle this problem, I don’t think the IHRB will be in control. I think all of the European racing bodies should now invite Usada (United States Anti-Doping Agency) to deal with this.
PK: As they’ve done in the US?
JB: Yes.
PK: What about the perception — and I’m sure it’s been levelled at you — that by highlighting all this you are diminishing or damaging racing?
JB: I agree, I am, but in the short term. But in the long term — to use an expression I hate — after the swamp is drained, things will be much healthier. And it’s not for me, because I’ll be gone at that stage.
PK: This is a difficult stance you’ve taken, something you’ve never had a problem with, but what about your family? Jackie (wife)? Una (daughter)? Kevin (son-in-law)? Have you had any conversations about it with them?
JB: I’ve discussed it with them all, and with my staff as well, and it comes back to the same thing. When you have right on your side you have nothing to fear.
