23/05/2013 00:00
TW
0

IT may not be the most important thing in the world to be worrying about at the moment but yesterday's news that the racehorses in the stables of the Newmarket trainer Saeed Bin Suroor had shown no sign of illegal drugs in tests by the British Horseracing Authority (BHA) will have been welcomed by all with an interest in the sport. Suroor trains for the Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammad's Godolphin operation which has more than 400 horses in training in Newmarket alone. However, it was confirmed that the earlier suspension for eight years of another trainer, Mahmoud Al Zarooni, was confirmed when seven more of his horses, in addition to those already identified, had traces of a stimulating drug. He has appealed against the suspension.

The BHA findings are important because Godolphin is the backbone of British flat racing today and any evidence of widespread doping would have been disastrous. However a question mark still hangs over the result of last year's classic St Leger race won by Godolphin's Encke at odds of 25/1 to defeat the odds-on favourite Camelot which had already won the Derby and 2'000 Guineas classics and was expected to take the Triple Crown for the time since Nijinsky in 1970. Mahmoud Al Zarooni was the trainer of Enke which was one of his horses found to have traces of drugs in the latest tests.