Horse racing betting

The day of reckoning is nigh for Nicky Henderson, who was last week adjudged to have used a prohibited substance to improve the performance of a horse owned by the Queen. One thing is certain: the strength of the sanction imposed by the British Horseracing Authority (BHA) will split the racing community right down the middle.

Strip the case to the bare bones and a suspension is the least Henderson warrants. Britains position on all forms of raceday medication is unswerving. Since it claims to lead the world in the fight against drugs, its authorities are obliged to grasp a particularly toxic nettle and throw the book at Henderson.

Nothing is ever that simple. The judgment that Henderson conspired to enhance a horses performance is at the very least highly contestable. Yet the BHA had little choice. For decades Britains authorities have scoffed at

Americas use of substances designed to stem internal bleeding, as was Hendersons unequivocal intention in this case. They cannot suddenly develop a moral conscience overnight.
Horses that suffer from internal bleeding are now two-a-penny. What happens is that breaking blood vessels cause blood spillage that trickles down into the lungs. In chronic cases, so much blood collects on the floor of the lung that the horse starts to choke. It cannot breathe properly.

Consider the effect when you take a sip of water and it goes down the wrong way. It forces you to cough violently. Now imagine having to run flat out in those debilitating circumstances. It would be inhumane, yet it happens every day on Britains racecourses. The authorities response is to loudly reiterate its medication rules on raceday – and to hell with the consequences. How humane is that?

The authorities have made no effort to address the bleeding issue even though research has shown that 90 per cent of all thoroughbreds bleed to some degree during a race. The vast majority are negligible cases, but what about such as the Queens Moonlit Path, who failed the post-race test? Well, they can keep running – and keep bleeding, and keep choking – for ever and ever. All within the Rules.

There is a further hypocrisy at play here. Horses are permitted to do their homework on anti-bleeding drugs. All within the Rules, so long as the drug washes out of the system come raceday. So you can fool a horse into thinking the bleeding has stopped at home; yet when it comes to raceday, when the physical strains on a horse render it most likely to bleed, you have to withhold medication. How humane is that?

Henderson is guilty all right. He is guilty of caring; of acting in the interests of Moonlit Paths welfare. Yet he has done so in a way that transgresses rules that have not evolved over time – as has the vexing issue of bleeding in racehorses. So acute has the problem become that it has drawn a range of healers to the cause, from herbal remedists to exotic witch-doctor types. All, it seems, to little avail, since Henderson was evidently prepared to run the one-in-ten risk of failing a random dope test on raceday – with a horse belonging to the Queen, no less.

That is one of numerous aspects to this case that makes little sense. Yet those are by-the-by. It was only a matter of time before a trainer got tangled up in the complex web of the treatment of bleeders. That it ensnared a man with an exemplary disciplinary record who trains for the most high-profile patron in the sport is unfortunate in the extreme.

Yet the broader question concerning the lesser of two evils remains. Should bleeders be allowed to train routinely on medication but be denied it when they are most at risk on the racecourse? Or should they be allowed to race with the appropriate medication on humane grounds? You decide.