London: Estimate, runner-up in this year’s Ascot Gold Cup in June a year after winning the race, is one of five horses which have tested positive for the banned substance morphine, it was announced by Buckingham Palace on Tuesday night. The mare, owned by Queen Elizabeth, was beaten by a neck by Leading Light in a gripping finish to this year’s renewal and will now almost certainly be disqualified from second place and the queen will forfeit the £80,625 (Dh296,078) prize money Estimate won at Royal Ascot in June.
The failed test will also mean that the 40-1 chance Missunited, trained by Michael Winters in Ireland, who finished a gallant third after trying to make all the running, will be promoted to second and Brown Panther, who is owned by Michael Owen, will be promoted to third place.
The British Horseracing Authority runs a near-to zero tolerance approach to the drug, which is allowed in training as either a pain killer or sedative but, at the levels found in the five horses that tested positive, is not considered performance enhancing. However, the source of the morphine is almost certainly a contaminated feed batch, which was the case when the Willie Mullins-trained Be My Royal, who returned minute traces of the drug in his post-race sample, was eventually disqualified after winning the 2002 Hennessy Gold Cup despite going through a lengthy court process. He was one of a total of 37 Irish horses to test positive to the substance at that time.
In a statement, John Warren, the Queen’s racing and bloodstock adviser, said: “On Thursday, July 17, the BHA announced that a number of post-race samples, obtained from recent race-meetings, had found to indicate the presence of morphine, which is a prohibited substance on race-days. Five horses, under the care of various trainers, were affected.”
He continued: “I can confirm that one of those horses was Estimate, the five-year-old filly trained by Sir Michael Stoute and owned by the queen. Initial indications are that the positive test resulted from the consumption of a contaminated feed product. Sir Michael is working closely with the feed company involved to discover how the product may have become contaminated prior to delivery to his stables.
“As the BHA investigates this matter, including potential links between different cases, Sir Michael continues to offer his full cooperation. There will be no further comment until the BHA announces its considered findings. Her Majesty has been informed of the situation.”
Earlier this week, Lambourn trainer Charlie Hills was the first to admit that one of his horses had also tested positive after the BHA initially refused to name the five horses and trainers concerned. There is speculation that as many as 10 more may have tested positive and, given that an Ascot runner-up is one of them, the worry with the timing is that a big Ascot winner may have tested positive too.
Rupert Arnold, chief executive of the National Trainers’ Federation, speaking earlier this week said: “All we can say at this point is that the product Dodson and Horrell [animal feed manufacturers] has tested as showing some contamination links directly to the trainers involved.”
Last week the Northamptonshire company, which goes to great lengths to ensure there is no contamination of its products, put out its own statement saying it had been informed by one of its suppliers of a possible component contamination. It announced it would immediately exchange all stocks of Alfalfa Oil Plus with fresh material. In these circumstances, when a feed is contaminated by a ‘naturally occurring prohibited substance’ it is more often than not rogue poppy seeds, which have found their way into the feed.
The BHA last night refused to confirm or deny Estimate was one of the horses involved or that the source is definitely a contaminated feed batch even though the cases, which are from horses in the care of a variety of trainers, bear all the hallmarks. They will not issue the names of the five horses until any requests for a B sample have been processed — which could take up to 21 days — and that the source has been confirmed.
In due course, the case will go to a BHA disciplinary panel and, if as is likely, the trainers have been found to have done nothing wrong, they might not even face a fine.
The queen took strong action when another of her fillies, a jumper called Moonlit Path, tested positive to the anti-bleeding drug tranexamic acid after making her hurdling debut at Huntingdon on February 19, 2009. In that case, her trainer Nicky Henderson was banned for three months and the vet, James Main, struck off for a breach of the rules of racing by injecting the filly on the morning of the race. The current situation, however, has thrown up one fairly obvious irony. Dodson and Horrell are ‘by appointment to Her Majesty the Queen’.
