Opium and cobalt positives lead to £4,000 fine for ex-trainer Richard Guest

Grand National-winning jockey and former trainer Richard Guest has been fined almost £4,000 by the BHA’s independent judicial panel in connection with two horses who tested positive for banned substances.

Guest relinquished his trainer’s licence in January 2021 – the same month he was reported to have lost a high court appeal against being evicted from his yard in Ingmanthorpe, North Yorkshire – and, according to the BHA’s counsel Megan Hurst, “failed to engage” in the disciplinary proceedings. Neither Guest nor any legal representative appeared at the hearing.

Now 57, Guest’s riding career included a Champion Hurdle victory aboard 50-1 chance Beech Road in 1989, as well as Red Marauder’s success in the near-waterlogged 2001 Grand National.

The two cases concerned Whatwouldyouknow, who tested positive for three metabolites of opium after winning at Redcar on July 21 2019, and Isntshesomething, whose urine sample revealed the presence of cobalt after finishing out of the placings at Chelmsford on December 20 2020.

The BHA highlighted the unusual nature of the Whatwouldyouknow case, with the report submitted by the LGC lab in Newmarket pointing out that the use of opioids was a human rather than equine drug issue and which stated that “the likely source was pure opium or large numbers of opium poppy seeds, rather than feed contamination”.

A witness contacted by investigators confirmed that a known drug user had left Guest’s employment two months prior to the positive blood test at Redcar and the BHA could offer no concrete theory for the presence of morphine, oripavine and codeine in Whatwouldyouknow’s system.

Cobalt is a well known blood doping agent which has been proved to enhance anaerobic performance, and the urine sample taken from Isntshesomething returned a level of 150 nanograms per litre against a threshold of 100 nanograms.

Richard Guest won the Grand National on Red Marauder in 2001Credit: John Grossick (racingpost.com/photos)

Further investigation by the BHA’s Dr Amanda Piggott revealed serious deficiencies in Guest’s keeping of medical records for his horses, a feature of the case the panel found to be “not at all impressive” after Hurst described a situation in which Isntshesomething did not have her own stable and was moved between boxes “from one day to the next”.

With both the hearing and the panel’s deliberation lasting barely an hour, a fine totalling £3,935.63 was handed down, with the warning issued that failure to pay the debt would result in Guest being placed on the BHA’s forfeit list and thus unable to work in any licensed capacity at home or abroad until it was cleared.

In March 2020 Guest was ready to embark on a new training venture at Harraton Stables in Exning, just outside of Newmarket, in association with owner Simon Lockyer. But ten months later he handed in his licence.

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