Disgraced trainer Fenton handed three-year ban
SHAMED Cheltenham Festival-winning trainer Philip Fenton has been banned from the sport for three years by the Irish Turf Club.
The exclusion follows the Co Tipperary trainer’s conviction and €6,000 fine after illegal medications, including anabolic steroids, were found at his stable during a Ministry Of Agriculture raid in January 2012.
Fenton’s ban will start at midnight on Friday, when all his Irish licences will be suspended. But the Irish Turf Club will allow him to be an ‘attendee’ at race meetings until March 1 in order to allow him to ‘wind down his business affairs in an orderly fashion’.
The case has cast a black cloud over Irish racing since it became public just before the Cheltenham Festival.
Fenton was allowed to run three horses at that meeting in March – Dunguib, Last Instalment and Value At Risk – but only after the British Horse Authority had taken the unprecedented action of drug testing the horses and inspecting the Irish Turf Club’s testing record of Fentontrained horses.
Fenton pleaded guilty to three charges at yesterday’s hearing which included bringing the sport into disrepute.
His legal team urged the panel to issue a financial penalty but Turf Club chief executive Denis Egan said the gravity of the case warranted a ban. Last year Godolphin trainer Mahmood Al Zarooni was given an eight-year ban by the BHA after admitting he had given some of his horses anabolic steroids.
But Egan disputed suggestions that Fenton’s three-year ban could be considered lenient.
He said: ‘I think it is a very significant punishment.
‘Apart from the fact his livelihood has gone for three years, he has suffered a lot of reputational damage. He had lost a lot of his good horses before today and he has lost a lot of his owners.
‘He was not in a good place even before the three-year penalty was imposed.
‘The panel took into account he pleaded guilty to the three charges and the reputational damage to the sport and came up with what they perceived to be a fair penalty.’
A cardboard box packed with illegal remedies was found when the stable owned by Fenton, 49, a former champion amateur jockey, was raided.
The substances included one kilo of the anabolic steroid Nitrotain and a 20ml bottle of a second performanceenhancing anabolic steroid Ilium Stanabolic.
Fenton, who has seven days to appeal, is best known in Britain for winning the 2009 Cheltenham Festival Bumper with Dunguib.
Horses already moved from Fenton include talented The Tullow Tank, who is now with Sandra Hughes.