Graham Bradley, the former jockey who served a five-year ban from the sport for passing information to a notorious cocaine trafficker, said on Tuesday that the authorities “seem to hold a grudge” against him after the British Horseracing Authority said it would take evidence at a recent disciplinary hearing into account when considering his longstanding application for a trainer’s licence.
Bradley and the trainer Brendan Powell were cleared of all charges at that hearing in October after the authority alleged Bradley had, with Powell’s assistance, been acting as an unlicensed trainer from October 2012 to May 2014. Despite the verdict Robin Mounsey, the BHA’s spokesman, said the disciplinary panel’s reasons for its finding detailed “significant concerns with Bradley’s conduct, which will be considered when determining his suitability to hold a licence”.
Bradley was banned from racing for eight years in November 2002 after he admitted passing inside information to the fugitive criminal Brian Wright, who was later jailed for 30 years for drug smuggling. Wright is also believed to have been involved in a series of racehorse dopings in the early 1990s.
Bradley’s ban was reduced to five years on appeal and he pursued a career as a bloodstock agent from 2007 before deciding to apply for a licence to train. His application was submitted in May 2013 and he has completed the training modules required by the BHA but it postponed a decision on his application pending the outcome of the disciplinary proceedings.
“I’m just hoping they haven’t made up their minds about my training application before I even apply,” Bradley said. “I’ve been working very hard for the last two years and we got found not guilty, that we’d not been doing anything wrong.
“It seems an ongoing thing as far as I’m concerned. They just seem to hold a grudge. If you’re found not guilty of something, you move on and get on with your life. I don’t know why they won’t let me get on with my life.
“I wrote to them asking if they had any reason why I should not apply for a trainer’s licence in October 2012. I got no reply, I wrote to them again in December 2012, saying I would like to go on the training modules in January. They replied to me in January 2013 to have a meeting, which they didn’t give me the result of.
“Then I went and did the courses and passed all the modules in May 2013 and applied for my licence. If they didn’t want me to have a licence, they could have told me then.”
In its findings, the disciplinary panel states there “is no compendious statement within the rules of what constitutes training” and describes its decision as “a close-run thing”. The panel adds: “There is no doubt that Bradley pushes at the limits of what is legitimate”.
Mounsey said the BHA will consider “whether it is necessary to revise the rules of racing to make a clearer distinction between what BHA considers to be an acceptable delegation of training responsibilities and an arrangement too close to an autonomous training operation.”
Mounsey added: “Now that we are in possession of the panel’s reasons, we will consider Bradley’s licence application. We note that the panel had significant concerns with Bradley’s conduct, which will be considered when determining his suitability to hold a licence.”
