Ronan McNally can continue to run horses while awaiting appeal against 12-year disqualification

Ronan McNally can continue to enter and run horses while awaiting his appeal to be heard against a record 12-year disqualification.

The Co Armagh trainer, whose star performer Dreal Deal runs at Navan on Sunday, is appealing against penalties imposed on him by an Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board (IHRB) referrals committee after a series of integrity rule breaches.

As well as the unprecedented 12-year ban, McNally was ordered to pay €50,000 in costs and told to return over €13,000 in prize money. The swingeing penalties are due to start on March 1st.

However, McNally lodged an appeal earlier this week and the IHRB has confirmed the businessman, who holds a restricted licence, can continue to run his horses until there is an outcome to that process.

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“There is no date finalised for the appeal as of yet and any sanction imposed is stayed until that appeal is heard,” an IHRB spokesman said.

It could be weeks before McNally’s appeal is processed given the complexity of the case and the likely need for extensive legal representation on both sides.

The referrals panel chaired by Justice Brian McGovern last week delivered a devastating verdict on the back of a lengthy IHRB investigation into the improvement in form of some of McNally’s horses.

“His offences strike at the integrity of the sport and the objective of having a level playing field for all who send horses out to race. They also involved a deception of the public, especially the betting public,” they concluded.

One of the horses is Dreal Deal who in 2020 landed a major gamble at Navan after being backed from 20-1 to 6-4. He has been stripped of that victory, as well as another subsequent race at Limerick.

However, on Sunday the horse is back at the course and distance of that notorious 2020 performance when he lines up for the Grade Two William Hill Boyne Hurdle.

Dreal Deal famously won at Grade Two level in the Moscow Flyer Hurdle just over two years ago and Denis O’Regan, who rode him that day, is reunited with the horse.

Having been 22-1 on that occasion he is also among the outsiders for this weekend’s nine-runner highlight.

In it the Charles Byrnes-trained Blazing Khal returns to action after 14 months on the sidelines and will try to book his place in Cheltenham’s Stayers’ Hurdle.

Despite his long absence Blazing Khal is a general 5-1 shot in ante-post betting for the Stayers, a race Byrnes won a decade ago with Solwhit.

A trio of Gordon Elliott-trained horses are also in the mix, as is Saint Sam who represents the all-conquering Willie Mullins team.

Saint Sam returned to hurdles with a comfortable success at Punchestown on New Year’s Eve.

With that run under his belt, and ground conditions continuing to dry out, the Mullins runner could hold a decisive edge over Blazing Khal.

Mullins runs Icare Allen in Saturday’s big handicap hurdle at Newbury but it is another JP McManus-owned runner, Filey Bay trained by Mullins’s nephew, Emmet, who has topped betting lists on the run up to the race.