Racing: Arrests in French doping case

Battling to revive its image, French horse racing has been damaged by a doping scandal featuring one of its top trainers and shadowy Dr Mabuse, who was previously linked to doping among professional cyclists.

After a nine-month undercover operation, prosecutors have indicted leading trainer Yann-Marie Porzier with breaking laws on harmful substances, drugs, fraud and attempted fraud.

Similarly indicted are his right-hand man, Jacques Auge; a Paris pharmacist; a pharmacy worker; and Bernard Sainz, whom the media dub le Docteur Mabuse after a bogus doctor portrayed in the 1932 Fritz Lang movie, The Testament of Dr Mabuse.

The 2005 season had been astonishing for Porzier, who set racing business agog with unexpected victories on the flat and over the jumps, propelling him to 10th most successful trainer in the country.

But that was before police made a dramatic descent on Porzier's stables in Chantilly, France's biggest and most prestigious horseracing centre.

The swoop coincided with a string of arrests and searches in Normandy at the stables of another big trainer, Jean-Philippe Dubois, one of the top names in trotting, and also in Picardy.

Numerous substances were seized during the searches and are being analysed, said Chantal Moulin-Bernard, a prosecutor in the Normandy town of Alencon.

The investigation, launched after a tipoff, saw police tap phones and install secret video cameras in the stalls where horses are penned at racecourses before they race.

The racing world is reeling, said the daily Le Monde. Horses have died in suspicious circumstances, dope tests have come back positive and some performances have been surprising.

Porzier protests his innocence.

"I have had 25 winners this year, and not a single horse has tested positive," he said.

"It seems to be some sort of lottery . . . I am inspected at least once a year, whereas others are tested every decade."

One of the most extraordinary figures in the affair is Sainz, 61, a self-avowed fanatic of cycling and horse racing, who describes himself as a homeopathic practitioner.

In 1986, Sainz was investigated in a case of amphetamine trafficking among professional cyclists, but was not convicted. In a 1999 cycling scandal, he was jailed for two months for illegally practising medicine and handling performance-enhancing substances. He was released on probation on condition he never left French territory, became involved in professional cycling or have contact with sportsmen.

But in 2002, he was stopped for speeding in Belgium, and police there found syringes and vials of pharmaceutical products in his car. Sainz admitted that he was going to see the Belgian cyclist Frank Vandenbroucke, at whose home police found the oxygen-boosting drug EPO, morphine and the bodybuilding steroid clenbuterol. Sainz was jailed for a month for breaching his probation.

The French racing authorities are wringing their hands.

Over the past three years, they have spent tens of millions of euros to upgrade racetracks in a bid to lure families rather than lone punters and to promote the idea of betting on horses as a fun, fair flutter in one of the worlds great sports.

The industry spends around eight million euros a year on dope testing to buttress this strategy.

The Pari Mutuel Urbain (PMU), which holds the monopoly on betting on horse racing in France, last year enjoyed a 7.6 per cent rise in turnover, to 7.6 billion ($13.45 billion), the largest of any betting board in Europe and the second largest in the world after Japan. Around 6.5 million people bet regularly or occasionally on the horses in France, an increase of 1.5 million since the marketing drive began.

So the last thing that the industry needed is a scandal that revives memories of racing's seedy past, with its roster of gangsters and races settled by bribes or chemicals.

France Galop, which organises flat and jump racing in France, has launched an immediate crackdown, vowing to step up blood tests and surveillance of racetrack stabling.

"We have to show punters that they can trust us. We owe it to them to show that races are honest and transparent," says technical director Thierry Delegue.

There are around 10,000 registered racehorses in France. According to the National Federation of French Horseracing (FNCF), which carries out dope tests, 21,686 tests were made last year, only 66 of which were positive.

The vast majority of these positives were incurred by negligence, from residues of legally-administered medication, says the FNCF.

Every winning horse is tested, and in major races, the first five are tested. There are also random tests that can be done during training if a horse has shown unusual behaviour during a race.

Under the tightened-up procedures, declared starters will be tested routinely before (as opposed to after) races, either days or hours in advance, and stewards will restrict access to horses in pre-race stabling, a favoured place for giving a horse a quick performance-enhancing jab.