Smorgasbord

There appears to be disgruntlement within racing at how the industry's state allocation remains unchanged at €67.2 million after last week's 2020 budget. Given the fraught political context of Brexit it might be argued that no change was a good outcome but one thing Irish racing is rarely short of is entitlement. There's even a suggestion the government might have dropped the ball on not giving one of those five year strategic fund guarantees of old rather than maintaining an annual review. To which one can only say there's no harm in asking: all they can say is no.

Why would the government say no? Well for one thing they've got out of the habit of guaranteeing sectors five years worth of state money. The global economic crash largely put paid to such largesse. Last year Horse Racing Ireland had a new five year strategic plan all drawn up and ready to go. It hasn't seen the light of day. No one speaks of it anymore. Maybe that's all to do with Brexit planning, and maybe it isn't.

After all it's hardly a shock that government might want to maintain the control which annual funding provides. Any longer-term allocation dilutes that control. It also presumes a level of confidence that at the very least such a commitment won't come back to bite. If it's a surprise to some that various state departments might not be full to the brim with such faith then it shouldn't be. Politically, racing has hardly helped itself in recent years.

At a minimum what the state might feel entitled to expect for millions of Euro worth of support is no headaches in return. But there's been a smorgasbord of irritation in the last few years.

It includes the kerfuffle Brian Kavanagh's appointment for a third term as CEO of HRI as well as headlines in relation to the stable staff association. Then there was the discrepancy in payments to stable staff in the north of Ireland under the old pension fund scheme. We even had the then HRI chairman Joe Keeling bite the cabinet hand by memorably declaring they needed to grow some backbone over betting tax.

Admittedly that was just tone deaf in comparison to more substantive issues such as the credibility of the sport and industry being undermined by cases involving possession of anabolic steroids, a subject that had previously been smugly dismissed as inapplicable here. The reputational knock was hardly helped either by the glacial pace of formulating a doping policy that aspires to the bare minimum requirement of tracking an animal from birth to death. Implementation still isn't complete.

Separately last year the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board confirmed the end of its link with the Irish laboratory it had used for over 20 years, a move reportedly involving a €500,000 settlement. Shortly afterwards the regulator's chief executive said he didn't know if a subsequent spike in positives for banned substances was related to the change of lab.

Take your pick from the usual internecine disputes, although the owners association squabble that's as complicated as it is boring has ended up both on the Minister for Agriculture's desk and in the courts. The defamation case brought by the IHRB's chief security officer against the Irish Racehorse Trainers Association is shortly expected to return to the High Court. And that's before we even get to the Curragh and the series of gaffes in its first year of operation.

Even that selection put together hardly smacks of a sector humming along in the sort of operational good order that might encourage those at the financial helm to loosen the purse-strings. Of course budget arrangements can change. If Britain's political establishment can emerge from its collective funk in time to stop a no-deal Brexit then the Irish government's calculations could change. In the circumstances though it's hard to imagine them changing as much as racing might want.

The IHRB has indicated there will be an increase in drug testing of jockeys as they try to provide even more of a deterrent to cocaine use. It appears to have replaced alcohol as the substance of choice among riders. The last 13 positive tests in Ireland have all been for cocaine. The IHRB had already gone down the deterrent route with a standard five year suspension ban for a first offence although 18 months has effectively been the longest ban imposed to date.

Cocaine use is also an issue in Britain where the BHA has said it is considering the introduction of hair testing. The drug takes up to three days to leave the system but hair testing can detect substances almost three months after being taken. The potential upside of that is indicated by Irish jockey Robbie Downey producing negative hair test results in his fight against a six month cocaine ban imposed by France Galop.

Irrespective of the criminal element to Class A drugs, riding racehorses is too dangerous an occupation for compromises to be made in relation to positive tests. Greater drug testing is never a bad idea. Nevertheless individuals are entitled to a private life away from the requirements of their job. If not interfering with the performance of that job then the idea of a regulatory body having a retrospective ability to go back months into someone's private life doesn't sit quite right. That invites accusations of a guilty conscience of course but paragons are as rare in racing as anywhere else.

There's also an obvious element to this hair-testing: if it is practical in humans then how come there hasn't been greater progress in its long anticipated implementation in relation to thoroughbreds. It could prove vital in the fight against doping and without ethical and privacy considerations in the process.

It's long odds-on now about Donnacha O'Brien retaining his jockeys crown after a Curragh double on Sunday extended his championship lead over Colin Keane to three (98-95.) It might have been a treble as O'Brien got just denied in a Listed race by a filly, Fancy Blue, that's trained by his father who afterwards gave a potential indication of things to come, specifically referencing David Wachman's old yard.

"She's Donnacha's really. He does everything with her at Longfield and knows more about her than I do," Aidan O'Brien said.

It had echoes of Joseph O'Brien's early steps into training when his father was officially the licence holder, including for Ivanovich Gorbatov's Triumph Hurdle victory. The youngest O'Brien did a trainers course earlier this year and like his older brother it is a case of when rather than if he's going to lose his battle with the scales. Father and son already dominate the top of Ireland's flat trainer's table. The prospect of a third family member joining the party is a cold winter prospect for rivals.

Finally, it was interesting to note how jockey Robbie Colgan's appeal against a five day suspension imposed under the 'Non-Trier' rules after his ride on Bigger And Better at the Listowel festival wound up costing him. Not only did the Referrals panel dismiss the appeal but they were so unimpressed that they increased the penalty to eight days. Considering the regulatory environment that once encouraged every sort of penalty to be appealed such a step was no harm at all.