Ed Dunlop treated far too harshly after his horse tested positive for cocaine – the rules need changing

I STILL haven’t got round to watching the movie ‘Cocaine Bear’. The reviews are pretty good, so it’s not to be sniffed at.

British racing has responded with it’s own follow-up, ‘Cocaine Horse’. But I’ll admit the plot is bizarre and the ending has left me feeling confused.

PA

Ed Dunlop’s 12-month suspended ban seems incredibly harsh[/caption]

In the unlikely event you haven’t got a Scooby Doo what I’m on about, I’ll fill you in.

On Tuesday we found out Lucidity, a four-year-old filly trained by Ed Dunlop, tested positive for Charlie after finishing second at Brighton in July 2023.

There is still some mystery surrounding how the old Colombian marching powder found its way into her system.

Short of the horse racking up a line of powder herself, in all likelihood it was caused by contamination from a member of Dunlop’s stable staff.

It might surprise you how easily this can happen. For example, if a person has drug residue on their hands and they handle equipment which goes in a horse’s mouth or around their nose, tiny amounts can be picked up in routine drug tests.

In other words, there was no wrongdoing on Dunlop’s part and it was out of his hands – but he was still hit with a 12-MONTH ban, suspended for a year.

So if anything like this happens again between now and the end of August 2025, he will be warned off for 12 months. That’s pretty brutal, don’t you think?

No wonder he is going to start randomly drugs testing his staff. If some selfish bugger goes on a bender and contaminates another horse, he is screwed. For the next year it’s always going to be at the back of his mind. I feel twitchy on his behalf.

This was not a case of doping or performance enhancing meds being used for nefarious purposes.

Yet there is a chance Dunlop’s career, or any other trainer for that matter, could be ruined by something out of his control.

That’s just not fair, and the BHA must look at amending their rules and penalties so a little more flexibility can be exercised by disciplinary panels in future.

And, let’s face it, the risk is pretty substantial that something like this will happen again as racing has an ongoing cocaine problem.

Yes, it’s an issue in wider society, but we’ve seen plenty of jockeys banned for snorting coke and recreational drugs use among stable staff, particularly in Newmarket, has been going on for ages.

Then there is the issue of racecourse security. It was highlighted during Dunlop’s disciplinary hearing that two people had been spotted on grainy CCTV near Lucidity in the Brighton stables on the day of her positive test.

But the quality of the footage was so poor you couldn’t tell how close they actually were to the horse, or the level of interaction.

Let’s not forget, we are only two years removed from two men having been given bans for ‘nobbling’ a red-hot 6-4 favourite in the stables at Newcastle.

They literally walked up to Ladies First in her box, gave her a beta blocker, and walked on out. She ran a few hours later and was well-beaten.

For all we know, there might have been other nobbling cases that were never picked up. Outside of the big tracks, racecourse stables are clearly vulnerable.

Dunlop has been hard done by. Let’s hope his story doesn’t meet a grizzly end, like the poor old cocaine bear.

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