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Questions racing must face
From ensuring that organised crime can not gain a foothold in racing, to maintaining strong global equine welfare and drug rulings in order to ensure the public’s trust in our sport is retained... the stakes are high
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T WAS A difficult month, on the back of a very difficult year to date... that was the line we were going to use in our NH issue after the Gordon Elliott photo created a pre-Cheltenham Festival week of intense discussion, rumour, conjecture, social media opinion, division and scrutiny. Sadly, for global racing, it has continued to be a year in which the sport has to ask itself questions regarding the activities of its high-profile participants, as well as the influences they may be facing from certain unwelcome parties. The press release issued by the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board [IHRA] after its referral with Elliott on March 5, 2021 wrote that there were “sinister” aspects to the case and “the Committee are satisfied that the publication of this photograph is part of a concerted attack upon Mr Elliott, the full circumstances of which are unknown.” One story made it to main stream press written up by Jonathan Buck in a column in the Mail On Sunday on March 7. Buck reported that his sources claimed that the photo was made public by individuals connected to Irish organised crime, that it was produced to ruin Elliott’s career after he refused to train for a Mr John Boylan, a criminal described by Ireland’s Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) as “a leading and directing member of an organised crime group based in the West Dublin area specifically involved in armed robbery and the sale and supply of controlled drugs”.
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Racing, with its intrinsic betting product, has always been attractive to criminals wishing to launder and legitimatise illegal earnings
Whether this is correct or not is beyond the scope of this bloodstock publication to discover, but it does focus thoughts on the threat posed by organised crime to sport in general and to horseracing in particular; with subsequent news from France bringing the issues into even further examination. In mid-March the French-based trainer Andrea Marcialis was one of nine people arraigned before a judicial tribunal to face criminal indictments on grounds of doping horses, organised crime and forgery. Marcialis was already facing a series of suspensions as both a trainer and owner after being found guilty by France Galop stewards on three counts of doping and two further cases of running a shadow training operation. The Italian-born trainer was one of 14 people taken to a police station in the Paris suburb of Nanterre following raids led by the Police des Jeux (gaming police), which resulted in the seizure of doping products, €8,800 in cash and the removal of three racehorses. Racing, with its intrinsic betting product, has always been attractive to criminals wishing to launder and legitimatise illegal earnings. The sport’s history is full of stories that were once viewed as romantic escapades involving “dodgy” types paying off jockeys and stable lads in order to gain a betting edge, but now, with the global fortunes washing around an interconnected international human drugs
