Bradley appeals over length of ban

Graham Bradley today launched an appeal against a five-year ban from all racing activities for providing inside information to a gambling syndicate.

The now-retired Gold Cup and Champion Hurdle-winning rider, 45, has already lost a High Court challenge to the April 2003 disqualification order following proceedings before the Jockey Club’s disciplinary committee and appeal board.

Now he is asking the Court of Appeal to rule that the length of the ban was “excessive interference” in his right to work.

Ian Glen QC, representing Bradley, told the Master of the Rolls, Lord Phillips, and Lords Justices Buxton and Scott Baker: “The effect of the ban on his proposed career as a bloodstock agent will be even longer than five years because the prospect of starting up again is uncertain to say the least.”

He added: “We accept that the appeal board was entitled to view Mr Bradley’s misconduct as serious, and as meriting in principle a period of disqualification. However, it is important to make a fair assessment of his misconduct.”

He said the information Bradley gave never had any impact on the result of the races and he believed that the passing of information was common practice among jockeys.

Mr Justice Richards threw out the challenge to the ban in October last year.

The disqualification was imposed in the wake of Bradley’s appearance at Southampton Crown Court in September 2001 when he gave evidence at the trial of a friend who was later acquitted of drugs charges.

During his evidence, he stated that he had received presents in the form of nights out and the occasional flight, and cash payments, from a man called Brian Wright in return for privileged racing information.

It was Bradley’s case that the Club was in breach of its implied contractual obligations to carry out disciplinary proceedings in accordance with the Rules of Racing – which applied to Bradley at the time of the alleged offences - reasonably and in a procedurally fair manner.

The only previous suspensions for the same offence had been measured in weeks or a few months and imposed upon jockeys who were at the time still riding.

But Mr Justice Richards said he rejected the challenge to the appeal board’s decision “and to the implementation of that decision by the Jockey Club”.

He said that “at the end of the day I accept the Jockey Club’s fundamental submission that in the circumstances of the case a five-year period of disqualification was on any view a proportionate and lawful penalty”.

Bradley, who retired in December 1999 after 17 years in the saddle, lives in Wantage, Oxfordshire.

The order stops him from entering any racecourse or premises owned, used or licensed by the Club and from dealing in any capacity with a racehorse.