'A genuine mistake and a first offence' - top point-to-point trainer rails at ban for ex-assistant over Lasix use

Joe O'Shea, trainer of the Aintree Foxhunters' winner twice in the past five years, has deplored the decision of a disciplinary panel to make Hannah Roach, formerly his assistant and successor, a disqualified person over a drug-related rule breach. 

Roach will be banned for 32 weeks from November, effectively ruling her out of the next point-to-point season, because a winner she saddled last year at Eyton-on-Severn tested positive for furosemide, commonly known as Lasix.

"Point-to-pointing needs people like Hannah," O'Shea told the Racing Post. "She shouldn't have been banned for a first offence."

He accepted that Roach was acting under his guidance at the time of the offence, saying he had handed the running of his stable over to her in the wake of his quadruple heart-bypass. He said the horse in question, The Creadan Rogue, was a regular bleeder who was given furosemide to help him in his work at home.

O'Shea added that 7ml had been given to the horse one Sunday morning, in the expectation he was being aimed at a race several days later. But plans were changed when the horse's owner insisted on running at Eyton, his local track, the following day.

"For some reason, we were convinced, me and Hannah, that it was 24 hours, out the system," said O'Shea. "We gave it to him at 7.30am on the Sunday morning. He's not racing till 4pm on the Monday. I thought, it'll be way out of his system.

"We never read the packet. Ignorance. It was her first season, I was recovering from a bypass. 

"This was a genuine mistake. We're guilty. Hands in the air. But it was a first offence."

However, the BHA presented the disciplinary panel with a report prepared by Dr Lucinda Tyler, its medication control and anti-doping manager, which ran counter to that version of events. Charlotte Davison, presenting the BHA's case, told the panel: "Dr Tyler goes into quite some detail to explain why, in her opinion, the scientific evidence before her indicated the administration had occurred within four hours of the sample being provided."

Roach spoke little during the hearing but pleaded guilty to breaching the rules and asked for leniency. 

"I was young and naive, still being mentored by Mr O'Shea, and now I'm thoroughly on my own," she said.

A gallops fall in November, of which the panel was aware, had left her with fractures to her T7 and T8 vertebrae, from which her recovery continues. 

"I've had a tough time of it," she said. "Me and my horse are both lucky to be alive."

She said she'd had little contact with O'Shea since leaving his employment at the end of last year, though she accepted she had become part of the celebrations when his Gracchus De Balme won at the Grand National meeting in April. "I was happy for the horse, I bought him in July last year," she explained.

"I worked for Joe for seven years. We won the race in 2021 with Cousin Pascal. That was his dream, to win that race. To win it again four years later was just unbelievable. If you watch back the video on ITV, he dragged me in there [to the winner's enclosure], I didn't really have an option." 

Delivering the verdict, panel chairman Clement Goldstone KC told Roach: "We wish you well. We are sure you will learn lessons from this unhappy experience."

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