the charles byrnes affair.

​I do not know Charles Byrnes and have no association with him. He might be an angel; he might be a terrible sinner. I have no way of knowing. I am aware, though, that he has a well-founded reputation for being a shrewd gambling man, with a mighty reputation for pulling off successful betting coups. A racehorse trainer who really knows the time of day, so I have read. It may not be a direct comparison but I feel a similarity here with the English racing authorities persecution of Captain Ryan Price back in the sixties and seventies.
Charles Byrnes has lost his livelihood for six-months for what the I.H.R.B. deemed negligence in leaving Viking Hoard unattended for a period of time in the stable yard at Tramore prior to a race in 2018, a stable yard, as with all Irish racecourses at the time, and still largely so, I believe, that did not possess C.C.T.V. cameras and as such veered toward complete laxity when it came to security. Byrnes and his son unloaded the unfortunate horse from the horsebox, put him in a stable, perhaps allocated to them by a Tramore member of staff, and left the horse unattended while they went to have lunch and to attend to other business associated with running the horse in the 2.35 race. 
In the accepted short time the horse was unattended, someone, the identity of which no one knows, entered Viking Hoard’s stable and administered an obscene amount of sedative, said to be 100-times over the international screening level. Byrnes, nor his son, were charged with administering the A.C.P., an offence far more damning than the charge of negligence that after appeal he was found guilty of. Neither father nor son were charged with the betting activity, conducted through a foreign betting account linked to Betfair. Indeed, the culprit in this end of the business was also never identified.
‘They got him’, Charles Byrnes that is, on what appears to me a catch-all regulation that suggests no horse once inside the racecourse stable-yard should be left unattended, a rule from my limited experience and imagination that must be violated by the staff of every racehorse trainer on a daily basis. Also, and thus far no report on this matter in the Racing Post has brought this into the light, is that there appears no other horse or human was in the stable-yard at Tramore at the time of the criminal act as apparently no one witnessed any unusual activity surrounding Viking Hoard’s stay at Tramore. Someone, I suggest, must have seen someone other than Charles Byrnes or his son enter that stable.
To my mind, if Byrnes had wanted to sedate Viking Hoard, he would not have done so while the horse was inside the Tramore stable-yard but in the horsebox, either on the way to the racecourse or in the parking area before unloading as to inject the horse, even in a stable complex devoid of security cameras, was to invite suspicion or to be caught in the act.
And what I find outrageous about the whole inquiry is that Byrnes was charged with negligence and not animal cruelty because if the I.H.R.B. thought him guilty of the doping crime but did not possess the evidence to convict him, with the dose of A.C.P. being so high it put the life of the horse and jockey at risk, the fate of the horse should have been given greater priority, when the betting aspect and leaving the horse unattended for a time less than an hour were the main points of debate. Still now, if the I.R.H.B. believe Byrnes guilty of administering the A.C.P., the Irish police should be asked to start a criminal investigation.
The crime of negligence is minor when compared to the animal cruelty issue and the possible risk of injury or something far worse to the jockey. The conclusion I draw from this sordid and drawn-out scar on Irish Racing, which is evidenced from Denis Egan’s quote ‘Verdict should serve as wake-up call to all trainers’, is that the I.R.H.B. was out to ‘get’ Byrnes, much in the way The English Jockey Club was out to get Ryan Price, and it didn’t matter what rule they found him guilty of, and used this affair to warn other trainers that they were not moribund but actively addressing all matters of integrity within racing. It is my opinion that the I.R.H.B.’s lax attitude to racecourse security was where the guilt truly lay, far more so than anything brought out in the inquiry that led to Charles Byrnes losing his licence to train.