Ruby Walsh: Combing through the detail looking for proper answers

It was a strange week on the news front for horse racing

Jim Bolger believes 'there will be a Lance Armstrong' in horse racing. Picture: Healy Racing 

I am not sure what kind of week it was on the news front for horse racing. Like any top performer in any sport, Oisín Murphy’s long suspension wasn’t a good one, but I think it can be seen for what it is: that of somebody who has lost the run of a life that eventually caught up with him. Oisín isn’t the first and won’t be the last.

It was the bottom of a painful cycle for the jockey but his honesty and acceptance of his wrongdoings most certainly made me look upon him in a kinder light. Good luck to him in his attempt to turn his world around.

The other story was from the Sunday Independent, which left me more curious than fearful of what the second installment will hold this weekend. Writer Paul Kimmage has run with Jim Bolger’s 'there will be a Lance Armstrong' quote in our sport for some time, and last Sunday he revealed the source of Bolger’s information.

It came via Stephen Mahon, a suspended trainer. I rode for him, though the article told me more about him than I ever knew, and painted an upbringing and youth that you wouldn't wish on anyone, though many have experienced.

The other part of Mahon’s life has been well documented in the press and the internet. You can Google 'Stephen Mahon' and judge for yourself what you might do with the information he gave you.

The article touched on how Bolger and Mahon became acquainted and how Mahon turned to Bolger when he believed the playing field to be unfair. For the first time since this whole saga began, the report, via Mahon, gave us the name of the substances allegedly being used.

It also appears from the article that the journalist has the name of the supposed “Lance Armstrong” in horse racing. However, the fact that Kimmage used Trainer X instead of a title and gave Stephen Mahon’s source within that yard a pseudonym (John Doe) indicates that nobody has any proof of wrongdoing. 

'John Doe' is a retired racehorse trainer running an outside yard for Trainer X. 'John Doe' and Stephen Mahon are friends, and it was through general conversations over their lack of success that doubts about the health of the sport emerged. 'John Doe' retired from training and what path he pursued after remains unclear, but he found his way into Trainer X’s yard.

Here, we are led to believe, he witnessed horses turning from pigeons into ostriches and so gave Mahon the name of injectable testosterone drugs, Sustavirol 250 and Propovirol 100. Mahon gave them to Lynn Hillyer, the chief veterinary officer at the IHRB, and she acted on the info - or at least appeared to have.

I have always believed sporting authorities can never win the battle against drug cheats when they have no idea what they are looking for. In this case, it appears that since July 2020 the IHRB had information surrounding the use of three specific substances: Equisolon, a corticosteroid powder, Sustavirol 250 and Propovirol 100, both injectable testosterone drugs.

It is alleged one of Trainer X’s horses ran on one of these drugs and won whilst within the recommended withdrawal period for the substance. The catch is that nothing was found in any of the horses tested.

So why not? All winning racehorses in Ireland are tested, so with this horse, if acting on information as the IHRB say they do, we assume they tested explicitly for such drugs.

I have no reason to doubt that, but the results didn’t find any of the above-mentioned performance-enhancing drugs. If the info were correct, they would have, so while nobody can arrive conclusively at any conclusion, it is fair to surmise that the information is somewhat suspect. 

But what if you look at it differently? In October 2020, French Laboratories detected minute traces of Zilpaterol in samples it had taken from race winners and from ‘trotting’, which is a bigger sport in France. The common denominator in so many positives was traced back to contaminated molasses, used by an Irish horse feed company.

A simple explanation, but why had the French found it before us? The same feed is widely used here and is, after all, an Irish product. It meant the withdrawal of many Irish runners in France’s showpiece Arc meeting in October 2020. Horses fed on the contaminated batch couldn’t run, but the curious part was always why only the lab used by France Galop detected these minute traces of Zilpaterol?

Therefore, one assumes alarm bells rang in the IHRB, and the anti-doping department sent samples of a portion of those taken in the previous six months to France for rechecking. I don’t know that to be a fact, but we are looking for a 'Lance Armstrong' here, so we can assume that Trainer X is high-profile enough to need a pre-training yard to accommodate the overflow.

Therefore, it is not outlandish to think Trainer X could have had runners and winners in France. They test to more extensive fractions per millilitre of blood or urine than Ireland does, yet there has been no positive findings for the three substances Trainer X is alleged to have used there either.

Does that mean Trainer X hasn’t had a winner in France, or does it mean 'John Doe' may be wide of the mark? Perhaps tomorrow, we will find more. To take a quote from Paul’s article, 'everyone talks in racing'. They have been for over 18 months now, only this week no-one seemed to know what to talk about. The possibility of a kite being flown, which some followed to the end of the rainbow, was certainly mentioned among the theories.

Last week’s article left every possibility open. I know exactly where I will be at 7.45am on Sunday when I drop my eldest daughter off to swimming — outside the paper shop looking for some answers.