News broke on Tuesday afternoon that Co Armagh racehorse trainer Ronan McNally has been thrown out of the sport for 12 years.
This is believed to be the longest disqualification ever handed down by the Irish racing authorities and the circumstances are unprecedented.
McNally is ostensibly being punished for deceiving the racing and betting public by ensuring his horses did not try to win on numerous occasions. But what is unusual about this case is that the stewards did not spot anything untoward on the day.
It was only when McNally’s horses subsequently won – and landed big gambles – that the authorities decided to take a closer look at the horses’ earlier races. Information supplied by betting companies is believed to have played a major part in the two-year investigation. As a result, several of McNally’s most heavily-backed winners were today disqualified, and the trainer ordered to return the prize money and pay legal costs of €50,000.
The McNally case is significant because now a precedent has been set whereby the authorities can re-examine races run in the past. If the stewards should decide that connections deliberately concealed the horse’s true ability in order to gain an advantage for a future race, the horse could be disqualified with severe penalties too for the trainer, jockey and anyone else involved in passing ‘inside information’ which was not in the public domain.
