Tony Martin, a successful trainer from Co Meath and multiple Cheltenham festival winner, is now able to participate in the Tipperary races on Wednesday with his horses Fairytale New York and Squire Ohara, following the deferment of his three-month license suspension. The Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board (IHRB) has postponed the suspension until a as-yet-unreleased High Court judicial review ruling on whether his license should be suspended in the first place comes through, which is expected on Thursday.
Martin had earlier faced suspension after an initial indulgent penalty for breaching anti-doping rules in 2023 was contested by The IHRB. He’d been fined €11,000 and given a six-month licence suspension which was held over for two years after his horse, Firstman, won at Dundalk but later on tested positive for drugs in January.
The case for a judicial review of Martin’s incident was slated for Tuesday and the judgement will be announced on Thursday. Firstman, who won a handicap as the 13-8 favourite, tested positive for the pain-numbing substance lidocaine, which is banned on race day.
Notably, Firstman is the third horse trained by Martin to fail a drug test in a span of four years. Both Martin and the IHRB contested the penalties, arguing from extremes of severity and leniency. As a result, the panel presided over by Justice Peter Kelly decided to suspend only half of Martin’s original six-month suspension, leaving the fines as they were.
The delayed suspension was set to end on August 15, impeding Martin’s ability to participate in the Galway festival – where he has claimed victory in the Galway Hurdle four times. Post-Fristman’s failed drug test, Martin’s property underwent an unanticipated inspection where hair and blood samples were collated from nine horses, including Firstman. These tests, fortunately, all came back negative.
During the initial hearing, Martin claimed ignorance regarding the origin of the banned substance. He suggested it could have been sourced from contaminated paper bedding at Dundalk, where Firstman was accommodated. However, the panel dismissed this defence.
The referral body was prompted by the IHRB to deduce that the substance, lidocaine, had been administered intentionally, but it determined that the case wasn’t one of intentional doping. Based on probability, the referral body couldn’t ascertain how Firstman tested positive for the drug.
In his career, Martin, the Irish Grand National Champion of 2001 with Davids Lad, celebrated a victory at Chester the previous Friday.
In 2016, Martin collaborated with Maurice Regan of Newtown Anner Stud to win a High Court judicial review of a contentious case related to the horse, Pyromaniac.
The horse trained by Martin was central to a ‘non-trier’ case in Killarney that year. While Martin successfully challenged certain penalties associated with the ‘non-trier’ rules, an IHRB appeals panel found him guilty of a different section of the rules. Following this, the racing regulator upheld a 42-day ban on Pyromaniac’s races, with the ban being suspended pending the outcome of the judicial review. Despite this, Pyromaniac ran in that year’s Galway Hurdle, although it did not place.
In the following year, 2017, the judicial review ultimately led to all sanctions related to the case being overturned.