Trainer Tony Martin fined €11k after IHRB complete investigation

High-profile trainer Tony Martin has been fined a total of €11,000 by an Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board (IHRB) referrals committee and handed a six-month licence suspension that has suspended for two years.

The IHRB confirmed the penalties on Thursday on the back of a Martin-trained winner in Dundalk last January failing a drugs test.

Firstman won a handicap at the all-weather course but subsequently tested positive for lidocaine, a local anaesthetic used to block pain that is a prohibited substance on race day. It is also a commonly used ‘cutting agent’ in cocaine.

The Billy Lee ridden Firstman started a 13-8 favourite for the two-mile handicap in January and won by an easy two and a half lengths.

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The referrals committee chaired by Susan Ahern originally met in August in a long-running investigation and reconvened last month to hear the case.

It emerged that on the back of the positive test in January, IHRB officials carried out an unannounced inspection at Martin’s premises in Co Meath shortly afterwards and carried out hair and blood sampling on nine horses, including Fastman. There were no positive results.

Martin has been training for over 30 years, saddling top-class winners over jumps and on the flat, as well as establishing a reputation for landing big handicaps. They include four victories in the Galway Hurdle.

The committee heard from the trainer that he didn’t know where the substance originated but put forward a defence that it could have come from contaminated paper bedding at Dundalk when Firstman was stabled there.

Martin’s fellow trainer Michael Halford gave evidence of how used paper bedding in stables is separated from clean content and put into bags but stated he “did not have confidence that the paper in the bags was not recycled”.

Halford also said he did not have confidence in an IHRB investigation last year on the use of recycled paper bedding at Dundalk. That came on the back of a complaint by the Irish Racehorse Trainers Association.

The committee rejected the contaminated bedding argument and although it said it was invited by the IHRB to infer that lidocaine was deliberately administered, they concluded there was no deliberate doping.

It said on the balance of probabilities it was unable to say how Firstman came to test positive for lidocaine.

However, it fined Martin €10,000 and disqualified Firstman. The trainer was fined another €1,000 after the IHRB’s unannounced inspection found he had failed to maintain a complete medicines register.

They withdrew Martin’s trainers’ licence for six months but suspended that ban for two years subject to him not breaching any anti-doping rules. Any breach will result in the automatic imposition of the six-month suspension.

In coming to their decision, the committee referenced how the Martin-trained Moonmeister tested positive for the anti-inflammatory TCA after winning at the Curragh in 2019.

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