Harness trainer gets 8-year ban
Prominent Canterbury harness racing identity Nigel McGrath has been disqualified from holding a training licence for eight years.
McGrath, who has trained for
20 years and had 570 wins worth
$6 million in stake money for his horses’ owners, had pleaded guilty to three charges laid by the Racing Integrity Unit (RIU), but strongly disputed the facts on two of them.
However, racing’s Judicial Control Authority said the evidence against McGrath was “overwhelming”.
The charges were attempting to administer a prohibited substance on a race day, refusing to supply information to a racecourse inspector, and obstructing a racecourse inspector during an investigation.
The case centred on a raid by three RIU investigators on McGrath’s stables near Rolleston on March 1, prompted by an anonymous tipoff that he was tubing horses with sodium bicarbonate shortly before taking them to the races.
“Tubing” is the illegal practice of inserting a rubber of plastic tube through a horse’s nose into its oesophagus, usually to administer sodium bicarbonate which is said to improve a horse’s stamina.
The investigators then confronted a startled McGrath and an associate Robert Burrows with a horse McGrath confirmed to be Steel The Show, who was due to race at Addington just three hours later.
They took a backpack that contained tubing gear, a bag McGrath described as private as he repeatedly
asked for it to be returned before snatching it back. No sodium bicarbonate was found, but RIU counsel Brian Dickey claimed investigators had caught McGrath ‘‘red-handed’’.
McGrath pleaded guilty to administering a substance on race day, but said it was a product called Air Support, which was he said was legally available in equine stores. He said he intended to squirt it on the horse’s tongue through a tube.
No Air Support was found, but McGrath claims he found the empty bottle and the equipment used to administer the product after investigators left his property. He agreed he was obstructive but denied he was abusive or aggressive.
At the hearing last month, McGrath claimed he couldn’t handle the raid that came on the back of the worst two years of his life following Operation Inca, a National Organised Crime Group investigation that was centred around allegations of race-fixing. He said he was overwhelmed and in shock. ‘‘It was like the world was caving in.’’
The RIU had asked for a 10-year disqualification, while Pip Hall, QC, acting for McGrath, argued for a monetary fine.
Hall said it beggared belief that McGrath and Burrows colluded to come up with a story of administering Air Support just in case they got caught.
However, the Judicial Control Authority, in its decision published yesterday, said the evidence was ‘‘largely uncontradicted and overwhelming’’, saying McGrath attempted to administer an alkalising agent via a gastric tube to Steel The Show on race day.
Authority members Jane Lovell-Smith and Tangi Utikere said they took into account that McGrath was suffering from severe stress and was genuinely remorseful. But that entitled him to only a small discount from their starting point of a 10-year disqualification.
‘‘Mr McGrath’s intentional aggressive and obstructive conduct undermined the rules and the licensing regime and rendered the RUI investigation redundant in that they were unable to perform their core functions.’’