Drug cheats in horseracing: If Jim Bolger is right it makes watchdog’s role all but untenable

Jim Bolger has suggested Irish racing's regulator isn't serious about catching drug cheats. He has said that if the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board (IHRB) was doing its job properly they would have uncovered dopers.

If he’s proven right it amounts to incompetence at best, or even worse. Either way it would look to make the IHRB’s role as racing’s police body all but untenable.

The irony is that the IHRB has never been better armed to refute claims which cut to the core of the sport’s credibility. On the back of steroids scandals from almost a decade ago, there has been a structural transformation in Irish racing’s fight against drugs.

It has come at a glacial pace and often seemingly in spite of the industry’s own instincts. But the Department of Agriculture’s granting of authorised officer status to a dozen IHRB personnel last month was a final piece in a medication jigsaw that on paper matches up with any in the racing world.

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It allows lifetime traceability and testing of thoroughbreds throughout their lifetime wherever they are. This is in conjunction with steps such as the appointment of a specialist head of anti-doping, the switch of testing to an internationally respected laboratory in England, and last year becoming the first major racing jurisdiction to introduce hair-testing of horses on race-days.

In comparison to blood or urine samples, taking hair from a horse can provide a historical record of medications given to it. So the IHRB possesses powers light years removed from when regulation was widely suspected to be little more than a fig-leaf exercise, a case of not looking very hard for fear of finding something.

Bolger, however, has rocked racing with his claims that drugs are Irish racing’s number one problem. He is so convinced some of his colleagues are cheating that an absence of positive tests simply means something else must be going on. Because he says he knows there is cheating. His insistence has both transfixed and divided the sport.

Just how rare it is for someone of Bolger’s stature in Irish racing to come out publicly and stand by their convictions like this can’t be overstated. He is one of the seminal figures in the game’s history and at almost 80 still competitive at elite level as shown by Poetic Flare’s brilliant Ascot victory last week.

Credibility

In a sport and industry infamous for insularity it is a commendable bucking of the traces from someone with impeccable credibility. Just as there is no arguing with Bolger’s credentials, there is also little room to argue about it requiring a figure of such stature to make accusations like this, and have them taken seriously, without providing any evidence to back them up.

All counter arguments from the IHRB about its zero tolerance policy on drugs, and the improvements it has made to ensure a clean sport, come up against Bolger’s insistence that while he hasn’t and can’t name names, or provide any smoking syringe, he knows there are cheats getting away with it.

It looks to leave the trainer in a win-win situation. If cheating is proven he’s right; if it isn’t then he knows better. And it looks like the authorities are in a lose-lose scenario. If they uncover wrongdoing they face a barrage of ‘told-you-so.’ If they don’t the same ‘told you so’ gets shot at them. Everyone though has a stake in getting to the bottom of Bolger’s claims.

There is now a stalemate which has provoked a volatile vacuum into which all sorts of speculation has poured. The insidious nature of doping means no names make all names suspicious. It isn’t contradictory to both laud Bolger’s whistleblower instincts and point out that such a situation is unfair.

The Olympics line about it being easy to spot cheats because they’ve got the medals is trite but history makes it hard to dismiss. There is an obvious correlation to racing, one which even Bolger might admit could prompt cynical eyes to turn towards his own Classic rejuvenation this year. Wanting to believe the worst of people is as old a racecourse tradition as cursing the stewards.

If Bolger's worst suspicions are proven correct there won't be much room for debate

There are calls for something to be done to break the impasse although as is often the way of such things, it’s vague as to what that ‘something’ should be. Bolger’s tack is to simply catch the cheats. But he doesn’t have to go through the process of finding and prosecuting them to judicial standards. Maybe a twist on protected disclosure rules could break the stalemate but it’s all very murky.

Fundamental to all this, however, is how Bolger is hardly alone in his lack of confidence in the IHRB. It may be legislatively armed but, rightly or wrongly, doubts about its capacity to use those weapons properly, transparently and impartially still exist. The perception remains that old instincts about not looking very hard for fear of finding something might still linger.

It is a perception that has dogged Irish racing’s regulation and not without justification. If nothing else, Bolger has performed a service in publicly airing the matter, correctly arguing that short-term pain can lead to long-term gain. Whether the IHRB as it stands is the body to regulate in that long term is debatable.

Whatever structures are now in place there’s no ignoring that crucial credibility gap. Policing only works with buy-in and there’s no point pretending the regulator doesn’t continue to battle scepticism about its capacity, and perhaps just as importantly it’s motivation, to do a difficult job adequately. The sins and omissions of the past still dog it.

There are obvious problems about accountability when that police is a private, self-elected club basically regulating itself. It is an exclusive organisation but funded by millions every year from the public purse. Whether or not such a structure is suitable for the regulation of a state backed multi-billion euro industry and sport needs to be radically examined.

However, if Bolger’s worst suspicions are proven correct there won’t be much room for debate.