The Daily Telegraph - 26.08.2019

Sport Racing

CHARLIE

BROOKS

Disastrous leak of report

and a new drug threat

mean BHA chair faces

make-or-break moment

S

he has been in the job

for only a few months,

but Annamarie Phelps,

the chair of the British

Horseracing Authority,

has two explosive issues

to deal with and they may be the

making or breaking of her tenure.

Before Phelps arrived on the

scene, the BHA launched an

investigation into the “practices at

bloodstock auctions”.

Given that the BHA does not

have any jurisdiction in this area of

the racing industry, it was always

going to be important to get as

many participating groups as

possible working emphatically

with the findings of the report to

achieve a positive outcome.

That assumes that the intended

outcome of the report was to

encourage people to buy

racehorses, rather than discourage

them. After all, that is one of the

BHA’s stated objectives.

So it was entirely sensible that

the BHA set up a working party of

leading bloodstock figures, who

spent six hours chewing over the

report, in an attempt to shape a

positive response to its findings.

That was very much a work in

progress when a draft of the report

was leaked to the Racing Post

almost a fortnight ago.

That leak was an act of

treachery, because it blew to

smithereens the good faith and

trust that those industry figures

were placing in the hands of the

BHA while working positively with

them.

It also ensured that it was not

possible to balance any criticism in

the report with some positive

responses that might have been

agreed.

So why would someone want to

leak this report? It is unlikely it

was for financial gain, so it seems

to me it is fair to assume it was an

individual or individuals who

wanted to sabotage this process.

Perhaps someone who wanted the

report to show the bloodstock

industry in the worst light possible

without giving the working party

the chance to pull together a

constructive response.

Informed observers have noted

that some of the wording of the

leak was only contained in the first

draft of the report. The draft that

was given to Phelps’ board

members.

So either she has to back her

board and exonerate all of them

On the spot: BHA chair Annamarie

Phelps has to show her mettle

Phelps must act decisively to defuse bombs

from this leak, or she has to clear

out the bad apple, who should not

be given whistle-blower status as

the report was coming out anyway.

But all of those shenanigans pale

into insignificance compared to the

threat to the integrity of racing

posed by the emergence from

America of a bisphosphonate drug

marketed in Europe.

Bisphosphonates mask minor

bone fractures in foals and

yearlings. In layman’s language,

the drug stimulates the bone to fill

in the bone imperfections, tricking

anyone taking an X-ray that all is

well.

Taking X-rays at all the major

yearling sales is routine, and

millions are spent, or not, on young

racehorses depending on those

results. But the long-term effect of

this drug is disastrous. Once

nature’s own healing process has

been disrupted, the bones are

unable to stand up to the stress and

strains of racing and the horses will

be prone to fractures.

So serious is this situation

considered to be in America that

one of the country’s most

respected breeders is securely

storing blood tests to give any

vendor a “blood health” window of

six months prior to any sale. In

effect, a guarantee that

bisphosphonates have not been

used on their stock.

As a result of the BHA being

aware of this potential threat

spreading to the UK, any two or

three-year-old who tests positive

for bisphosphonates will be

banned from racing.

But here lies the problem.

Where is the protection for owners

buying yearlings at public auctions

across Europe this autumn? Make

no mistake, it is now a racing

certainty that there will be

yearlings offered for sale who will

have been given this drug.

It is entirely possible that an

unwitting owner or trainer might

purchase a horse, only to find it is

tested in training by the BHA a

couple of months later and banned

from racing for two years.

The obvious answer to this

conundrum would be that all the

sales companies guarantee that the

yearlings they sell are tested for

bisphosphonates by the same

laboratories using the same

methods and thresholds that the

BHA use.

Racing in the UK and Ireland is

the cleanest in the world. It is

absolutely vital that status quo is

preserved if the highest animal

welfare standards are to be

maintained.

26 *** Monday 26 August 2019 The Daily Telegraph

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