The enduring charm of the Bangalore Derby

  

Need for drastic re-think by the powers-that-be

By Rolf Johnson

Wildfires are burning throughout the world as climate change heats up our planet. Racing isn’t an island, immune from the inflammatory language of organizations, worldwide, seething with ‘indignation’ at “the exploitation of animals”. Among those with the highest profile which require ‘saving’ are racehorses.

 

Unfortunately racing itself is in a state of perpetual civil war between those who are devoted to a sport centuries old, and those for whom it is just another way of accumulating wealth. Those who are threatening racing’s existence have, admittedly sometimes unwitting, allies within the sport itself.

 

The Bangalore Turf Club have banned, for two years, a trainer with an exemplary record, for the use of a therapeutic drug, Tildren, which can relieve pain by promoting the replacement of damaged bone to extend a horse’s career and thus its life. If you are of the opposite persuasion – that Tildren is used to extend a horse’s money making life – then so be it, though I maintain you have no understanding of horsemen. The Bangalore training team of ‘Paddy’ Padmanabhan and his wife Sharmila are shining examples. For them the horse’s welfare has been paramount through forty-two glittering years at the top of their profession.

 

 

Tildren is NOT a banned substance: it may be used only after a horse has notionally finished normal skeletal development, after the age of three and a half years. Any sanction only comes if the drug is detected on racedays. The problem is that Tildren may be detected as much as three years after administration and different countries have different withdrawal periods after which a horse may race without sanction. The UK has a thirty days’ limit: Scandinavia twice that.

 

This where the judgement of Solomon is required. Does King Solomon, the impartial and sagacious Biblical judge who made the exemplary choice of life or death for a child, reside within the Bangalore Turf Club? Their ultimate judgement in this case could be the paradigm for universal cases involving what was once regarded as a ‘wonder drug’: and indeed many other horse medications and practices. Did respected trainer Padmanabhan, his career only blemished by one case involving medication, mitigated by extenuating circumstances, use Tildren recklessly?

 

A digression to exemplify the worldwide extent of the problem racing has with its detractors comes from one of the loudest, the American pressure group PETA - People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Their indictment of horseracing goes as follows:

 

“They weigh at least 1,000 pounds, have legs that are supported by ankles the size of a human’s, and are forced to run at speeds of more than 30 miles per hour while carrying people (and lead weights) on their backs. Racehorses are the victims of a rapacious industry that is rife with drug abuse, injuries, and race fixing, and many horses’ careers end in slaughterhouses. They quote a newspaper source: ‘The thoroughbred race horse is a genetic mistake. It runs too fast, its frame is too large, and its legs are far too small. As long as mankind demands that it run at high speeds under stressful conditions, horses will die at racetracks. ‘Many racehorses become addicted to drugs when their trainers and veterinarians give them drugs to keep them on the track when they shouldn’t be racing. Finding an American racehorse trained on the traditional hay, oats, and water probably would be impossible’.”

 

And here’s the point. There is a myth that racing maintains a difference between performance enhancing drugs (such as PETA rails against) and those that are in use every day to minister to horses.  A bucket of water enhances performance – not all water is the same.

 

The true dividing line is what is a legitimate i.e. sanctioned performance enhancers and those that are not. Here the line wavers – “It is a dotted line,” suggests a leading British vet. “We are talking about ‘grey areas’”.

 

Racing’s has a plethora of Rules, differing from jurisdiction to jurisdiction such as to produce a dense fog causing people to lose their way. When one appears before British Stewards – as I have experienced – it is advisable to display a degree of humility – short of abject subservience. We have much more professional stewards than the days when Lord this and Duke that, patrician dictators by nature and upbringing, could snuff out careers without blinking. They, the authorities, could also be bamboozled because new prescriptions science began to outstrip detection.

 

Captain Ryan Price was a commando who fought on the Normandy beaches but when he was called before the Jockey Club to explain the ’incredible’ surge in form of his hurdler Hill House, he held his breath and  didn’t ‘command’ the stewards panel, some of whom bore grudges. He controlled his temper in order to convince them that Hill House made his own ‘prohibited substance’, cortisol, as opposed to it being administered. The Captain was exonerated. He had earlier been banned for winning the same race “too easily” with Rosyth.

 

The Appeal Board of the BTC now have similar options with Padmanabhan. Tildren stimulates nature: it was devised, by a French laboratory for treatment of bone cancer in humans and is used to enhance a horse’s own skeletal healing process.

 

The stewards of the Bangalore Turf Club allowed the horse in question, Adjustment, to compete on 25 January 2023 after a lab had detected traces of Tildren in urine, though not blood, as a “special case”. This is not a regular steward’s way of dealing with drug cases which are nothing if not usually black and white, according to the Rules in operation at the time. I’ve been fortunate enough to have raced in Mauritius, where testing of Adjustment’s samples was undertaken, I can vouch that though there is only one racecourse on the small island, it is not a ‘Mickey Mouse’ affair. But given that the veterinary profession in India has improved out of all recognition since the vet at the Palace Stud in Bangalore where I worked with the late Sam Hill, would turn up on his bicycle with his ‘tools’ in his bicycle repair kit, I am baffled that testing was not done in India.

 

I am not about to ‘retry’ the trainer on the evidence I have seen – which seems to be an open and shut case of innocence only blemished by a certain amount of misdirection and incompetence. But then Tildren is a drug which appears to have a life of its own. If may be detected as much three years after the initial application, how can it be used with any certainty within the law?

 

Richard Hannon was fined £1 (yes less than Rs100) when a horse in his care was tested positive for Tildren, the apparent leniency not because he is the blue eyed boy of British racing or even that his former champion trainer father (a friend of Padmanabhan – Richard Hughes rode for both men) is a legend in his lifetime. It was acknowledgment that the question of how to deal with Tildren is a fraught and unresolved.

 

Hannon’s horse, a two-year-old, arrived from France with no indication that it had been given Tildren. William Haggas, like Hannon constantly challenging for the trainer’s title – both universally admired masters of their craft – will not use Tildren under any circumstances.

 

“I tried it once,” said Haggas, “but the jeopardy I was put in because of the volatile withdrawal rates put me off it completely.” New medication for human ailments arrive nonstop – occasionally, as was the case with Thalidomide, with cruel side effects. When Tildren appeared in the early years of the twenty first century it was regarded as the wonder drug, the panacea for bone ailments. Bone is constantly being remodelled developing a horse’s (and ours) skeletal strength. As one vet, acknowledging my layman’s ignorance, said: “It helps fill the tiny holes created when bone cells die – as they do constantly”. The original instructions for use came in French and German. They’ve been translated since but the true effects remain something of a mystery.

 

 

Tildren was endorsed by the world-renowned medical expert Jean-Marie Denoix. The veterinary world, which has its own hotbed of opposing views, thanked Denoix for “rescuing them from an equine practice of arrogance nourished by incomplete knowledge of fundamentals”. The efficacy, the end result of Tildren treatment, is difficult to calculate, hence the variety of withdrawal times and whether the new bone Tildren has helped create will sustain the rigours of training and racing. The debate rages, especially in America which has endured a virtual epidemic of deaths in racing due principally to catastrophic bone fractures. Treatment of say, bucked shins with the bone bending like a twig, must be aligned not only with Tildren treatment but with the training regime – so the twig doesn’t break.

 

Nobody would gainsay that Padmanabhan and his wife Sharmila have been exemplary in developing young horses and getting the best out of them for the purpose they were bred. Their case has rocked the racing world – far beyond the boundaries of Bengaluru. You only have to take the notional birthdates of thoroughbreds to appreciate the complexities: the medication may not be given to horses under three and a half years, yet since thoroughbred’s birthdates are all given as January 1 when their actual arrival in this world can be five months or more after that date, surely complicates the whole business?

 

Everybody, not least trainers, are on constant look out for an ‘edge’ in this era of unheard of economic pressures. Is the whole game becoming morally indefensible given that with a medication such as Tildren we may be altering or at least anticipating nature? The clarion cry in the UK is, “The horse comes first”. Tildren promised to be a trusted aid to welfare. Regulation has dictated the limits to its use but those limits, like the bone growth Tildren enhances, are a changing calendar.

 

Racing rarely makes it to the front page of the Press – internationally – but The Times of India reported in blazing headlines that Adjustment had “tested positive for a banned substance called Tildrinic Acid”: to repeat it is not banned at all – the restrictions are purely in respect of when it may be administered to ensure that it is not in a horse’s system on raceday. As this has not been established beyond reasonable doubt Tildren should be either banned altogether – or allowed to operate uncontrolled. That may seem to be a radical solution, not to say an outrageous one. But until all Tildren’s secrets have been revealed what other options are there? Bangalore, or so I was led to believe during my time in the Garden City has more whispers than in ‘Arabian Nights’ (which after all originated in Indian animal stories)– more even than Bollywood! If the swift and candid resolution of the Padmanabhan affair meets the universal approbation of the worldwide racing community as exemplary, it will signal that India has given the lead on a burning issue.

 

This is the transcript from the inquiry into the routine tests done on the two-year-old Mensen Ernst trained by Richard Hannon. He had raced at Nottingham before being beaten a nose at Brighton. The resolution – innocent – was a tribute to the understanding shown by all parties.

 

 

A breach of Rules (G)2.1 and (C)37.1 of the Rules of Racing in that on 9 July 2019 MENSEN ERNST (IRE) ran in the J&D Band Novice Stakes (Class 5) at Brighton Racecourse finishing second. Following the race the Stewards ordered MENSEN ERNST (IRE) to be post-race tested.

 

 

On 31 July 2019 it was reported that the post-race urine sample returned by MENSEN ERNST (IRE) tested positive for tiludronate (a bisphosphonate). Mr Hannon requested the B Sample to be analysed and on 20 September 2019 this confirmed the presence of tiludronate.

The BHA’s investigation identified that the Horse had been administered Tildren (containing tiludronate) by a veterinarian in France on 28 June 2018. The Horse did not enter Mr Hannon’s care until 3 December 2018. 

 

Upon further consideration of this case with the BHA’s (former) Director of Equine Health and Welfare David Sykes, the BHA accepts on the facts of this case only that whilst Mr Hannon is in technical breach of Old Rules (G)2.1 and (C)37 (due to the positive sample) he did not know, and could not reasonably have been expected to know, that the Horse had been administered a bisphosphonate before it came into his care. 

 

Under Rule (A)74.2 MENSEN ERNST (IRE) is disqualified from The Mansionbet Novice Stakes (Class 5) at Nottingham racecourse on 13 June 2019 and the J&D Band Novice Stakes (Class 5) at Brighton racecourse on 9 July 2019. The requirements for horse to run are that the horse must not have been administered any bisphosphonate under the age of three years and six months. The Chairman has given consideration to the exceptional features of this case and noted that the BHA accepts that although in breach of Rule (G)2.1 Mr Hannon could not have been expected to know about the administration in France prior to the arrival of the horse in this country.