John Hughes, a retired vet, has been disqualified from racing for five years and fined €4,500 (£3,600) by Ireland’s Turf Club after its referrals committee, which deals with disciplinary issues, found it had been “clearly established” that Hughes was in possession of 6kg of the powerful anabolic steroid Nitrotain when his home was raided by police and customs officials in February 2012.
Nitrotain is fast-acting, builds muscle mass and improves a horse’s strength, stamina and general wellbeing. It is easily administered as an oral paste and excreted in no more than a few days, making it almost impossible to detect in post-race dope tests.
Hughes pleaded guilty to possession of the steroid when his case came to trial last year but declined to attend the referrals committee hearing on Saturday, which was held after the same panel had banned the leading Irish trainer Philip Fenton for three years in another case related to possession of steroids. A 1kg tub of Nitrotain was found at Fenton’s yard by department of agriculture investigators in early 2012.
Hughes’s brother Pat, a licensed trainer and a former winner of the Irish Grand National, could also face a disciplinary hearing with the possibility of a ban from the sport after being found guilty early in November of possessing unauthorised animal remedies including the anabolic steroid stanozolol. He is appealing against the Carlow district court’s decision.
Two packages addressed to John Hughes were intercepted by Irish customs officers in February 2012 and found to contain 6kg of Nitrotain which had been ordered from an Australian supplier. Louis Reardon, a veterinary inspector with the department of agriculture’s special investigations unit who was involved in the subsequent raid on Hughes’s home which recovered the packages, told the hearing that this was a “commercial quantity” of the drug.
Chris Gordon, the Turf Club’s head of security, added that he had tried to question John Hughes about his reasons for possessing such a significant quantity of a banned anabolic steroid during an interview on 9 December 2013. Gordon said Hughes refused to name any racehorse trainers he had worked for “due to client confidentiality under the veterinary code of conduct”, and that it had not been possible to re-interview Hughes subsequently.
The committee found that it had been “clearly established [well beyond the balance of probabilities]” that Hughes had been in possession of Nitrotain, and that his “failure to engage with reasonable and legitimate questions and inquiries put to him by Turf Club investigators also fell well short of what was required of a licence holder”.
It also found that the significant amount of Nitrotain that Hughes had ordered, and the fact that he was “a highly qualified and experienced veterinary surgeon, which left no room for doubt about his knowledge of the nature and effects of the substance, or as to the legality of the situation”, were aggravating factors when determining his five-year penalty.
Nicky Henderson, meanwhile, will attempt to win the Hennessy Gold Cup for the third year in a row and the fourth time in a decade on Saturday, but the former champion trainer’s run-in to Newbury’s biggest race of the season started poorly on Monday when he saddled three beaten odds-on favourites in the space of four races at Kempton Park.
On the corresponding day three years ago Henderson set a new British record when he had seven winners from seven runners at three different tracks in little more than an hour and a half. In 2014, though, it was a different story as West Wizard, a 2-9 chance, River Maigue (4-9) and then Polly Peachum in the feature race, the Listed OLBG Mares’ Hurdle, (8-11) all failed to justify their cramped odds. Theinval (4-1), in the final race, was Henderson’s only winner on the card.
Henderson expects to run both Hadrian’s Approach and Triolo D’Alene, who won the race 12 months ago, in Saturday’s Hennessy but Djakadam, from the Willie Mullins stable in Ireland, seems sure to start favourite for the race after significant support from 10-1 down to a top price of 4-1 in recent days.
