NICKY HENDERSON MUST SAY SORRY

TRAINER Nicky Henderson has described the three-month ban and £40,000 fine imposed on him on Friday as "a harsh sentence".

But the reality is that the British Horseracing Authority could have been much more severe. Henderson was found guilty of allowing a banned anti-bleeding drug to be given to the Queen's horse Moonlit Path, in the belief that the substance could not be detected.

He can now make no entries for horses from his Seven Barrows yard from July 11 to October 10, a period when he would have virtually no runners anyway.

I stand by all my observations as to Henderson's essential decency and believe he is possessed of a character which would find cheating an anathema.

But he has clearly been foolish on this occasion and compounded his error by being complicit in a cover-up. While his reputation is tarnished, that of his vet James Main lies in irredeemable tatters.

The fact that Henderson, held in almost universal professional esteem and the recipient of so much trust from the punting public, should be the subject of lurid headlines suggests something is badly awry in racing.

That something is the role of vets, who used to be in the business of looking after the welfare of horses but are now also expected to perform as routine a host of other services at the murky interface between legitimate treatment and ethically dubious medication.

The whole veterinary culture within racing is in danger of the function of carers being overtaken by that of the chemists. Indeed, you could argue that has happened already.

HAPPIER TIMES - Nicky Henderson at this year's Cheltenham Festival with the Queen

I find the spectacle of Henderson hopping from foot to foot in these shabby circumstances deeply dispiriting.

The BHA report on the episode is damning and their punishment has been tailored with no small degree of kindness.

Henderson is not short of £40,000 and the ban is infinitely less damaging than a six-month one.

To my utter surprise his statement contained no apology or admission that, somewhere along the line at Seven Barrows, it had been forgotten what the place has always been about in years past.

To know Henderson is to like the man. He will have been profoundly upset by this episode.

But this is not some random accident. He has been a part of it though largely, I suspect, without understanding the road he was travelling.

A sorry saga, so why not say sorry Nicky? The public will, on balance, believe you mean it.

Read Alastair Down in the Racing Post every week

This article has 0 comments