Willie Mullins fined as Final Demand loses Cheltenham Festival placing

Willie Mullins has been fined £1,100 and Final Demand disqualified from the Brown Advisory Novices' Chase at the Cheltenham Festival after testing positive for a prohibited substance, BBC Sport reported on Monday. The horse had finished second in the Grade One race on 11 March, but an independent British Horseracing Authority disciplinary panel ruled that it had raced with mepivacaine in its system.

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The panel identified mepivacaine as a Category B prohibited substance. It is a local anaesthetic commonly used in the treatment of racehorses. The disciplinary findings also stated that Mullins had not declared its use on Final Demand in the medical declaration forms submitted before the race. The financial penalty for the trainer accompanied the decision to remove the horse's placing from the Festival event.

How the substance entered Final Demand's system remained unresolved. According to the BBC's account of the panel's findings, expert evidence indicated that a low dose had entered the horse very shortly before sampling. Investigators were unable to establish how that had happened, taking into account the precautions in place at the yard. The findings did not identify who had administered it.

Judicial panel chair Sarah Crowther KC said there was no suggestion that Mullins or any member of his staff knew of an administration of mepivacaine. The BHA accepted that reasonable precautions had been taken. Those findings accompanied the fine and disqualification, distinguishing the positive test and declaration breach from any suggestion of knowing involvement by the trainer or his employees.

The investigation also led to a separate penalty for Cheltenham after CCTV footage from a yard where Final Demand had been kept was not retained. Racecourses are required to keep that footage. The panel was told that the hard drive holding the recordings had been misplaced, and Cheltenham was fined £5,000 for the breach.

Crowther cautioned against overstating the significance of the missing material. Final Demand had moved to another yard by the time it received the dose, and recordings from that location were obtained and reviewed. The missing footage therefore concerned a different yard from the one relevant to the timing identified by the expert evidence.