Narrowing IHRB’s credibility gap is job for racing and not just one person

Irish racing has a new sheriff in town and his name is Darragh O’Loughlin. He begins his role as chief executive of the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board on Wednesday. Plenty within the sport suspect Wyatt Earp faced calmer job prospects at the OK Corral.

Not many in racing appear to know much about McLoughlin apart from he is a pharmacist by profession.

There have been plenty social media wisecracks about that on the back of doping controversies still swirling about the thoroughbred game. But for a regulator with an image problem, jokes are irrelevant in comparison to McLoughlin being seen to come at the job from outside.

This is an organisation desperately dealing with criticism about its performance across a range of issues but primarily in relation to drugs.

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[ Jim Bolger’s claim about doping in the sport shocked racing but what have we learned ]

Jim Bolger’s incendiary comments about doping being racing’s number one problem, and his lack of faith in those leading the fight against it, have prompted unprecedented scrutiny of the IHRB. Much of the time it has found the glare from that spotlight very uncomfortable indeed.

Having its dirty linen rinsed through countless headlines, and even being examined by an Oireachtas Committee, left the body charged with maintaining racing’s integrity looking torn and frayed.

Structural and governance issues have been pinpointed. It has also come up short in terms of transparency. But at the heart of the regulator’s problems is public confidence. Unfairly or otherwise, there isn’t so much a credibility gap as a gaping canyon.

Rail as IHRB members do against simplistic generalisations, structurally there is no getting away from how a €2 billion industry is effectively being overseen by a private members club policing their own and getting almost €10 million in state funding this year to do so.

That it has often appeared off the pace in dealing with a sorry catalogue of cheating over the last decade reinforces popular scepticism about a body wide open to accusations of being a stereotypical closed shop unwilling to examine itself too closely for fear of stumbling over something unpleasant.

For much of that, both it and racing generally has only itself to blame.

The IHRB as well as the administrative body, Horse Racing Ireland, are manifestations of the wider racing community and even when presented with stark evidence of anabolic steroids being found in licensed premises, much of that community’s automatic instinct was to close-ranks.

The right platitudes about reform got trotted out. But actions failed to live up to the rhetoric. To use the parlance of the racetrack, any steward’s enquiry would have concluded it was in ‘non-trier’ territory.

Failure at the time to decisively grasp the various nettles, including lifetime traceability and out of the competition testing, that would have provided reassurance of the sector’s seriousness in tackling the problem has come back to bite.

On the back of Bolger’s incendiary comments, it was impossible to ignore how quickly various measures did manage to get put in place so now at least a structure exists that gives IHRB officials some capacity to properly take the fight to the cheats.

Ironically, the powers those officials now possess are amongst the best of any major racing jurisdiction anywhere in the world. Continuing cases of prohibited substances being detected are embarrassing but can also be interpreted as evidence of a system that is finally working.

It’s impossible to forget, though, how only bad headlines seemed to provoke the motivation to do what could and should have been done much earlier if only the will existed to do so.

Despite having so much self-interest invested in cleaning up its own backyard, racing’s insular instincts won out until it had little or no choice but to act. The net result leaves the IHRB in an uphill reputational firefight.

The one sure thing when the regulator started looking for a new CEO last year was that it would be someone from outside. Not even as stuffy a body as the IHRB could have been unaware of the signals an in-house appointment would give.

[ IHRB advertise for two independent board members ]

O’Loughlin is a career executive and was secretary general of Irish Pharmacy Union until April. His knowledge of racing appears to be negligible.

Clearly a skilled administrator, he will encounter scepticism that behind all the corporate jargon his appointment simply serves to allow the IHRB argue its readiness to appoint an outsider as evidence of greater transparency.

It will be neat to portray this it in terms of a new broom coming into to clean up the place, casting a fresh eye into some musty old corners, and one not bound by loyalties to friends and colleagues in the horsey game.

The counter argument is that O’Loughlin could be a lamb to the slaughter. Racing is a political minefield, full of nuances and agendas for the unwary to step on. Plenty bumptious figures have come in and found out the hard way they were dealing with much bigger boys than they’d imagined.

In a perfect world those charged with policing would possess all the required knowledge and savvy of the business while also being seen to be perfectly impartial. The problem is waiting for such perfection would mean waiting forever.

Maybe the new guy will be radical. God knows a little radicalism would be no bad thing in such a conservative sector. One meaningful step that might be examined straightaway, if practicable, is a readiness to retest historical samples. Trust in the new regime could be helped by examining the old.

However, pinning such hopes on a single fresh face errs on the side of optimism. Previous holders of the position have come in from outside too and faced the reality of how power in the IHRB resides in its constituent parts. One person riding in to clean up town is a trope that only works in the movies.

It’s still the case that the vital task of narrowing the IHRB’s credibility gap is a task for the whole sport and industry, not just a single individual.