Billionaire horse trainer Luke Comer banned for doping offences

Billionaire businessman Luke Comer has been banned from training racehorses for three years after 12 of his string tested positive for anabolic steroids. Details of drug breaches described as “unprecedented” by the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board, and which rank as the biggest drugs scandal in this country’s racing history, emerged on Thursday when the regulator outlined the result of a long-running case.

As well as a pair of concurrent three-year suspensions of Comer’s licence, he was fined a total of €85,000 and ordered to pay costs of over €750,000. The ban is due to start on January 1st of 2024.

The case failed to establish how the drugs got into the horses’ systems. Comer argued that hay fed to the horses may have been contaminated with drugs through pig slurry. However, as the licensed trainer he was found responsible for the positive sample results. Attempts to contact Comer for comment have been unsuccessful.

The IHRB did out of competition testing at the businessman’s racing stables in Kilternan, Co Dublin on November 10th, 2021.

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It followed his runner He Knows No Fear returning a positive sample for the anabolic steroids methandienone (MD) and methlylestosterone (MT) after running fourth in the Trigo Stakes at Leopardstown on October 16th. The positive result was returned from a hair sample.

He Knows No Fear was one of a dozen horses that subsequently had hair samples taken during the IHRB’s out of competition test in November. They all tested positive for MD and/or MT. Anabolic steroids are banned at all times in racing.

Comer, the 65-year-old businessman who, along with his brother Brian, has built up the internationally renowned Comer Group into a global multi-billion Euro property empire, is a prominent owner, trainer, and sponsor in racing.

The Comer Group sponsored last Sunday’s €600,000 Irish St Leger at the Curragh during the Irish Champions Festival.

Comer’s involvement in racing goes back over three decades and he trained his own horse Chimes At Midnight to win the Curragh Cup in 2001. He was also responsible for Raa Atoll, winner of a Group Two race in Germany in 2019.

Last year Comer had a best ever tally of 11 flat race winners in Ireland while he has had eight successes so far this year.

In 2020, He Knows No Fear was the longest priced winner ever recorded in Ireland or Britain when winning at Leopardstown at 300-1. Last month Comer was in Roscommon to watch Navajo River win at 200-1.

News of such extensive breaches of the doping rules is set to rock the sport which has been under a cloud in recent years due to allegations of doping.

In 2020, one of the country’s leading trainers, Jim Bolger, declared drugs to be Irish racing’s number one problem. He claimed he wasn’t playing on a level playing field and that he had not faith in the IHRB’s capacity to catch cheats.

Bolger’s claims prompted a number of appearances by the IHRB in front of the Oireachtas Agriculture Committee which resulted in an independent review of the regulator’s anti-doping mechanisms.

Dr Craig Suann, an Australian expert, reported last year in what was essentially a favourable examination of the IHRB’s anti-doping policy. Suann said the IHRB “were at least matching international best practice.”

In 2014 leading trainer Philip Fenton had his licence removed for three years after being found guilty in the district court earlier that year on eight charges of possessing banned animal medicines including anabolic steroids.

Also in 2014, Irish racing’s regulator ‘warned off’ the former Department of Agriculture veterinary inspector John Hughes for five years.

Hughes, a brother of former trainer Pat Hughes, was found in possession of 6kgs of the anabolic steroid Nitrotain when his home was raided by Gardai and customs officials in 2012.

The quantity of the powerful drug that builds muscle mass and is very difficult to detect in post-race dope tests, was described as being of “commercial” levels.

Comer’s ban comes a decade after British racing was rocked when Mohammed Al Zarooni, trainer for the Godolphin operation owned by the Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed, was banned for eight years after admitting to giving 15 horses anabolic steroids at his Newmarket yard in 2010.

Comer, originally from Glenamaddy in Co Galway, and who began working life as a plasterer, has racing stables in Kilternan but is officially based in Dunboyne, Co Meath.

In 2017 he had to pay almost €50,000 in fines and costs after the regulator found long-running issues with the management of the Kilternan property.