‘LONELY’ Shark Hanlon was forced to sell 15 of his horses yesterday — as the agonising wait to find out his fate went on.
The fed-up trainer faces a crazy 10-month ban and is still in limbo after Irish racing chiefs failed to give him a decision on his appeal last week.
It meant Shark had to go ahead with his dispersal as 24 horses went through the ring at Goffs Doncaster Sale.
In total 15 found buyers and brought in £113,000.
Shark said: “When you’re selling horses here it’s a lonely day.
“When you are put up to this, I don’t think it is very fair.
“The trade wasn’t great but we had to sell, regardless. I just hope for better days ahead.”
Shark is due to start his suspension in December for allegedly ‘bringing racing into disrepute’.
Shark transported a dead horse in the back of a trailer when the tarpaulin covering the animal blew off and pictures were posted online.
SunRacing’s Matt Chapman has hit out at the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board.
He wrote in his column: “The Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board will bring shame on its own body if it suspends Shark Hanlon from training.
“That’s my view on ‘tarpaulingate’, which faces crunch time, or ‘le crunch’, as my old man used to say.
“Hanlon appeals against the severity of a ten-month suspension for bringing racing into disrepute – something many feel IHRB will do to themselves if they ban the trainer – after he transported a dead horse in an open (although it didn’t begin that way) trailer attached to one of his branded lorries.
“Unless the IHRB have something on Hanlon that none of us know, this seems an outrageously unnecessary punishment for any governing body to give to one of its participants.
“Indeed, if looked at sensibly you could argue some readers would believe Hanlon deserves a medal for transporting a dead horse away from open land as soon as he could.
“Of course, Hanlon himself would not see it like that, because as a man who deals with animals on a daily basis he would just consider it the right thing to do.
“This case, though, is not just about that.
“For those of you who don’t know how the chaos has evolved, it all became public in June when footage from a mobile phone was widely shared on social media of a dead horse carcass visible to the public in Hanlon’s trailer.
“The King George-winning handler explained the unfortunate event by telling everyone that a tarpaulin covering the carcass had blown off during transportation to a knackery in Co Carlow.
“It was impossible to see that while driving.
“There are numerous witnesses to the fact a tarpaulin was in place, and Hanlon himself re-tracked his journey and picked it up later on the day concerned.
“An IHRB panel decided Hanlon had been “grossly negligent” in the transportation of the carcass and had caused “significant prejudice to the integrity, proper conduct and good reputation of the sport of horse-racing.
“What utter nonsense.
ROLE OF RTE DOCUMENTARY
“It also concluded that Hanlon’s appreciation of the matter should have been sharpened by the fact that the events occurred in the context of an RTÉ Prime Time Investigates programme relating to serious equine welfare issues being broadcast earlier that week.
“Again. Totally irrelevant.
“It’s nothing to do with Hanlon that RTE had a show on equine welfare.
“But more importantly than that, he had taken every step to cover the horse. The cover came loose. These things happen.
“Yes, it didn’t look good. But to take someone’s career way for that is ridiculous in the extreme.
“Do the right thing IHRB and free the Shark.”