Eric McNamara has said he felt “singled out” for the large penalties imposed under non-trier rules about his runner Mount Ferns at Clonmel earlier this month, all of which have been lifted by an Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board (IHRB) appeals panel.
The Co Limerick trainer was fined €6,000 and his son Conor, who rode Mount Ferns, was suspended for 40 days after the race-day stewards took a dim view of the horse’s performance when sixth in a novice handicap chase.
Mount Ferns was also suspended from racing for 90 days following the stewards’ conclusion that jockey and trainer had breached Rule 212 by “deliberately or recklessly causing or permitting a horse to run other than on its merits”.
McNamara snr described the penalties as outrageous and insisted the horse was trying its best. Conor McNamara said Mount Ferns started to hang badly down the hill to the straight and that he couldn’t ride the horse out to the line.
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An IHRB vet at Clonmel said Mount Ferns was “post-race normal”. However, an appeal hearing on Wednesday heard that the horse was lame on three legs the day after he ran at Clonmel.
“When he came home that evening, he was lame, and the following morning when the vet came to examine him, he was lame on three legs,” said Eric McNamara on Friday.
“Plus, the fact how we showed them videos of his last four or five runs where his tendency to hang has been getting worse and worse and it came to a peak when the horse was hanging so badly he was ‘wrong.’ Conor couldn’t actually ride the horse up the straight. That was it.
“I just thought it looked like we were singled out for some reason. I don’t know why. The penalties were horrendous in the first place, absolutely horrendous. But I still stand by we were 100 per cent innocent,” he added.
The trainer, who has trained for more than 40 years and enjoyed big-race success including a Grade One in France, was helped at the appeal by his son Emmet, rider of the 2020 Epsom Derby hero Serpentine.
“We had a very fair hearing. They listened to all the evidence and came up with the right result. We didn’t have solicitors or barristers. We defended the case ourselves, myself and my two sons, and we spoke honestly and truthfully and they came up with the right result,” he said.
In other news, Emmet Mullins again has Kelso’s Morebattle Hurdle in his sights on Saturday as Vischio bids to follow up her recent victory at the Dublin Racing Festival.
Mullins landed the Scottish track’s annual highlight with The Shunter in 2021. That horse proceeded to secure a big-money bonus by subsequently scoring at the Cheltenham Festival. Vischio could also be eligible for a six-figure bonus if successful.
Earlier on the Kelso card, Patrick Mullins will hope to make his first Kelso ride a winning one on his father’s Chart Topper in a Grade Two novice hurdle.
