Greyhound owner challenges decision to withhold prize money

A greyhound owner has brought a legal challenge after €36,500 in race prize money was withheld from him for alleged doping/contamination of three of his dogs.

Owen McKenna, New Inn, Cashel, Co Tipperary, brought High Court judicial review proceedings against the Irish Greyhound Board (IGB) over findings of its control committee, later upheld by an appeal board.

Last February, an IGB control committee imposed five fines totalling €1,000 on Mr McKenna in relation to the dogs “Farloe Rumble”, “Offshore Bound” and “Farloe Blitz”, which had run at Shelbourne Park on September 5th, 2015. It also decided the prize money of €36,500 would be forfeited. The prohibited substances allegedly found were meloxicam and hydrochlorothiazide.

After Mr McKenna lodged an appeal, an appeal committee said last month that hydrochlorothiazide could affect greyhound performance. As there are no threshold levels for this prohibited substance, any finding of it in a dog was a breach of the 2007 Racing Regulations, it found.

It also found Mr McKenna engaged in a reckless feeding regime for which he must accept the consequences. His appeal was dismissed, the fines upheld and the forfeiture of the prize money affirmed.

On Monday, Mr Justice Séamus Noonan granted Mr McKenna permission to challenge the control committee findings following an ex-parte - one side only represented - application by his counsel David Conlan Smyth. The matter was returned to January.

Counsel said his client was not afforded fair procedures and there was a failure in the chain of evidence in that the samples taken from the dogs sent for analysis to the UK were there for three months.

There was also a failure to give reasons as to why the feeding regime was other than normal, he argued.

More crucially, the IGB had changed its feeding policy in November 2015 and retrospectively applied this new regime to September, when the dogs raced, counsel said. There was no breach under the previous regulations, he said.