Swings & Roundabouts

The Maginot Line was France's grand plan to keep the Germans out. It was a logistical feat, running throughout the French-German border. It looked impregnable. It looked superb. The only problem was the line ended at Belgium. In 1940 the Germans simply swung around it and exploited the single albeit crucial chink in an otherwise impressive facade. The fear is that 'prior day notice' ultimately proves a vital chink in racing's proposed new defence plan against doping.

It's dispiriting because much of the Anti-Doping Policy that has taken so long to formulate, and which is set to be put in front of the Horse Racing Ireland board today, is laudable. Traceability, the banning of TUE's and the Service Level Agreement that allows Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board vets test into studs and other unlicensed premises are among a long list of admirable elements.

But this issue of notice still nags. The Breeders Association has haggled on it from the start. Originally it was looking for more than a week. Now a feat of negotiating skill for which the Anti-Doping Task Force chairman, Colm Gaynor, must take real credit has managed to weave all the disparate elements into one document. But with the notice question still disentangled.

Notice of testing should be anathema to any doping policy. On a practical testing level one day might not make much difference to a horse that's been given steroids. But finding that out relies on being able to test that horse in the first place. So you hardly have to have a Tolkien-like imagination to envisage scenarios where notice is given the day before and on the day itself a horse isn't there to be tested. On the face it there's no positive and everything's hunky dory: except it's hokum.

In perception terms too it's such an avoidable own-goal. If everything really is hunky dory there's no need for the thoroughbred industry here to leave itself so obviously open to query. The automatic question that will be asked is why is a day's notice necessary. Yet this seems like it's going to be left hanging out of an otherwise substantial looking policy.

Even before formal agreement has been reached by all those parties involved in signing up to the final document the IHRB has conceded the notice issue is less than ideal. You can see why. It's the regulatory body's vets who are at the coalface. The IHRB is going to have to administer any policy and defend it in public when necessary.

The rationale for the IHRB to sign on anyway is that there are some circumstances when notice of testing may actually be necessary. More importantly perhaps there's an understandable urge to finally get this thing over the line, an urge hopefully shared across the board.

From the viewpoint of IHRB concerns though, it's interesting to note how so much of the Turf Club membership are intrinsically bound up in the breeding industry yet this anomaly over notice remains. An apparent lack of vigour about being seen to impose similarly stringent regulations to breeding as to racing has certainly been noted in some circles.

Overall, maybe it's just pragmatic in the short-term to include a provision for 'prior day notice' in any new policy simply to get everyone signed up to something that signals a note of intent. But for that note to be backed up in future by meaningful action such a gap must be closed off as soon as possible when battle is done. Because who knows what might try to swing around it in future.

It's usually advisable in these things to adopt a 'what's possible is inevitable' attitude, something that may be compromised in terms of proposed lifetime bans for horses that test positive for steroids. It's an admirable instinct. The worry is that specific cases can emerge, possibly in relation to animal welfare, that might make such a ban problematic. Questions of degree are always thorny.

Philip Fenton's return to training after a three year disqualification has provoked calls for automatic lifetime bans too in relation to those found guilty of offences relating to anabolic steroids. The motivation for such a move might be admirable as well but such blanket bans are unwieldy and again don't allow for degree.

Fenton's three years was inadequate. If he'd got double that he could have had no complaints. Significantly the likelihood is that penalties for similar offences in future will be a lot more stiff and appropriate. But in relation to the issuing of licences in such circumstances the question of degree always crops up.

Fenton pleaded guilty in court to possession of prohibited medicines including anabolic steroids. The inconvenient reality remains though that there was no hard evidence he used them and there was no positive results when horses in his yard were tested. People can have their own opinions in terms of overall context, as well as the value of deterrents, but not every case is the same.

If, for instance, testers under the proposed new doping regime go into a yard and a handful of horses test positive for steroids - with those responsible 'bang to rights' - does that constitute a similar scale of offence to what happened with Fenton: I would argue not but blanket bans make such arguments irrelevant.

The fallout from Tim Brennan being cleared of British Horseracing Authority corruption charges last week has already been considerable. Suffice to say the actual case presented by British racing's ruling body against champion trainer Willie Mullins's vet panned out as being particularly feeble, enough to wonder why it was ever brought in the first place.

A disciplinary panel hearing isn't a court of law but Brennan was armed to the teeth legally and sure enough a case basically built on inference and assumption got cut to ribbons. An awful lot of time, effort, money and anxiety was expended over a case which revolved around €3,342 that Brennan's brother apparently stood to make.

Interesting questions do arise out of the whole sorry saga. In relation to phone records for instance where do regulatory bodies stand in future if phone records are simply not made available, especially in the case of someone not bound by the rules of racing. But more general questions arise for racing in relation to information generally and what's acceptable to share.

Racing yards don't exist in a vacuum. People talk. It's as old as racing. And there can't be a bookmaker of any sort or size that doesn't have a source of some type in any yard of significance. It's even been known for the horse's mouth - a trainer - to be onside. And it's fair to assume figures of a lot more than three grand float about as a result.

It might be a new digital betting world but some old truths when it comes to betting are still valid - if something looks too good to be true it usually probably is.

That doesn't mean it isn't actually a new betting world. Proof of that came again with another 11.5 per cent fall to €26.1 million in on-course bookmaker turnover for the first half of 2018. As a sector it looks to be on a one-way ticket to commercial irrelevance.

The Racecourses chief executive Paddy Walsh is in talks with the bookmakers to see if anything can be done. But when he says "everyone is walking around with a bookmaker in their pocket in terms of their phone" he's only acknowledging reality. If that central problem can't change anything else smacks of fiddling for the sake of it.

Finally - and for the sake of having an actual racing picture to tag on to this - how outstanding a classic ride was James Doyle's on Sea Of Class in the Irish Oaks: on a warm day the 30 year old Englishman was coolness personified.