A fortunate outcome for both the Gosdens and BHA in Ketamine case

My initial reaction to the findings of the recent BHA case involving the father and son training duo of John and Thady Gosden was how fortunate they all were that a stable employee was willing to testify about her own drug use.

Gosden Stable Cleared in Ketamine Case

John and Thady Gosden were fined £3,000, but cleared of any wrongdoing, after two of their horses had tested positive for the prohibited substance Ketamine after running in races.

Fiona Horlick who adjudicated on the case on behalf of the BHA stated: “I accept that culpability in this case is low as neither John nor Thady Gosden had knowledge of the administration, and the Yard had a number of reasonable and targeted precautions.”

Ketamine is a drug used as an anaesthetic by Vets, but can also be used by humans to get high.

It turns out the latter was the source of these positive tests as a female member of staff at Clarehaven Stables owned up to being a regular recreational user of the drug and the likely source of the cross-contamination of the horses.

Not only did she admit to taking the illicit drug three times a week, but also suggested that, although she never took the drug while at work, she “was not always washing her hands before coming to work.” She was the groom looking after one of the horses in question.

Hair samples from a further four horses in the yard also came back positive for Ketamine.

Her admission cleared up an otherwise messy case for both the BHA and the Gosdens. We have seen in many other similar cases that it is often next to impossible to track down exactly where and when a horse came into contact with a prohibited substance when there is no trace of the substance found in the yard.

Remarkably this is the second time a staff member at Clarehaven Stables has solved a case by putting their hands up after a horse from the yard has tested positive for Ketamine. In 2021 John Gosden was fined £500, but cleared of intentional wrongdoing in an almost identical case involving a horse called Franconia.

On that occasion a male staff member, who was the groom looking after the horse at the time it had tested positive, came forward a number of weeks after the investigation had commenced and “admitted occasional recreational use of Ketamine.”

“That person claimed that they had last used Ketamine about two weeks before the Franconia race, but they had stored the drug in their wallet and believed that there may have been residue of Ketamine in the wallet. The member of staff had used their credit card from the wallet on the day of the race which may have transferred residue of Ketamine to their hands. They then handled the horse.”

Industry-Wide Contamination Concerns

If a racehorse can test positive for a substance like Ketamine by simply coming into contact with someone that previously used the drug, this represents a significant issue for the sport going forward.

Ketamine is not a recreational drug I hear anything about in my neck of the woods, it’s apparently cannabis and cocaine in Kildare, but drugs are everywhere these days and it appears a broad cross-section of people use them regularly as part of a night out.

According to both the BHA and the Gosdens protocols and procedures were already in place at Clarehaven Stables designed to prevent these most recent cross-contamination cases, yet the horses still tested positive for Ketamine.

The BHA did not publish the amount of the drug found in the recent positive samples, referring to "low-level exposure" in the case of one of the horses, but according to a statement issued by the Gosdens it was “a minute trace amount of Ketamine” which suggests it had no performance altering effects on the horses.

If the traces of a drug detected in the horse are so low as to be insignificant to the performance of the horse and there is no obvious proof that the horse was intentionally doped, it seems like a waste of limited resources holding a full-blown investigation each time which involves follow up searches and testing at the trainer’s yard.

Obviously, if there is a pattern of similar positives from one yard a different approach should be taken, but there are potentially other more serious offences slipping through the net while the authorities are often going around in circles trying to solve a minor infringement of the rules that most likely happened accidentally.

Not every recreational drug user working across the industry can be relied upon to own up in these circumstances and if the source of the contamination is not found it becomes a very complicated situation for both the authorities and the trainer involved and can never be satisfactorily resolved.

Lord Erskine's Remarkable Career Continues

Changing the subject, I got a great kick out of seeing Lord Erskine win at Killarney last week. The 12-year-old used to be owned by a good friend of mine named Jerry Nolan who sadly passed away four years ago.

Jerry’s brother James has kept the veteran in training with Harry Rogers and what a fantastic job Harry has done with the horse.

Harry knows Lord Erskine inside out and won’t chance running him unless everything is spot on.

Lord Erskine won over hurdles at the Fairyhouse Easter Festival and between then and last Tuesday when he scored on the Flat at Killarney, Harry Rogers had declared him for five other races, but withdrew him each time.

Minding the horse in the way Rogers has done must be contributing to the longevity of Lord Erskine’s racing career. Bought for £5,500 as a three-year-old Lord Erskine has now won 13 races and €390,000 in prize money for connections and all going well he will rock up at Galway next week with a live chance of adding to that tally.

Looking back at Lord Erskine’s career, there is one day that sticks out above all others. Jerry Nolan was a very shrewd punter and went for a right old touch on him at Tramore back in 2017, when he backed the horse at all rates from 50/1 to an SP of 9/1.

Lord Erskine finished a close third that day off a Flat rating of 52 and it’s still hard to fathom how he got beat. He went on to win 5 of his next 6 races and to think that eight years later he is still winning handicaps by 4 1/2 lengths off a rating of 79.