A six-month ban has been upheld for allowing a horse to be tranquillised in an incident linked to suspicious betting
The Viking Hoard doping case, in which a horse was nobbled with an overdose of the tranquilliser acepromazine (ACP) in
Ireland in October 2018, concluded on Thursday when the trainer Charles Byrnes lost his appeal against a six-month ban for “inexcusable” negligence when he left his horse unattended for “20 to 25 minutes” before the race.
Questions surrounding the case remain, however, not least about “substantial” lay bets on another of Byrnes’s runners at Sedgefield on 2 October 2018, which won an undisclosed amount when the horse, Thosedaysaregone, was pulled up.