‘Shark’ Hanlon ban reminds trainers of their duties in social media age | Greg Wood

The King George-winning trainer, “Shark” Hanlon, kept it uncharacteristically brief last week after hearing that he had been banned for 10 months by the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board for transporting a dead horse along public roads and through a village near his stable on an open trailer. “There is going to be an appeal put in straight away, that is one thing,” Hanlon said, “and I can’t say too much at this stage as my legal team have advised me not to say too much. But we are very surprised and very disappointed with the results of the hearing.”

Hanlon’s disappointment, from some angles at least, is understandable. A snap inspection of his yard by IHRB investigators after the incident in June found that “all welfare and other matters were in order”, and while his undeniable negligence in failing to properly secure a tarpaulin over the dead horse was compounded by the decision to then hitch the trailer to his instantly recognisable horse box, he did not consciously sit astride the dead horse and pose for a photo. Gordon Elliott, who notoriously did exactly that, was banned for a year with the last six month suspended, which is only slightly more than Hanlon’s (pre-appeal) penalty of 10 months with the chance to apply for a suspension of the final five after serving four months.

Hanlon has also generated a great deal of very positive PR for racing in recent years, most memorably when Hewick finished fast and late in last season’s King George at Kempton and the trainer led the celebrations in typical fashion, as he reminded the Boxing Day crowd that “we’re not here for a long time so we’re going to have a good time”.

Jumps racing has become much more a business than a sport over the last 25 years but Hanlon’s unbridled delight in his success with a horse bought for buttons harked back to a time when the best horses were not all concentrated in four or five yards. He seemed to be in the game for the craic as much as the cash, and it was as obvious to potential new fans of the sport watching the first episode of Champions: Full Gallop on ITV as it was to the crowd packed around the winner’s enclosure as Hewick returned in triumph.

Whether Hanlon should really be all that surprised by last week’s finding, however, is more arguable. Social media, for good or ill, has been with us for 15 years or so, and how something looks in an image or a 10-second clip on Twitter/X or TikTok is now all-important.

The IHRB and the British Horseracing Authority can invest all the time, money and energy they have into spreading and reinforcing the message that horse welfare is an overriding priority. The image of a dead horse on an open trailer behind a “#TeamHewick” horse box, though, will inevitably lodge more deeply and permanently in the minds of many who see it.

In that respect, Hanlon’s slipshod failure to secure the tarpaulin on his trailer is even harder to excuse as it came just 48 hours after a high-profile RTÉ investigation into welfare standards in Ireland’s equine industry as a whole. If ever there was a time for trainers to be especially mindful of their responsibilities to the sport and its public image, this was it.

Hanlon’s penalty might seem relatively severe but in a case like this, where significant but unquantifiable damage has been done to the sport’s public image, the intention is to remind others of their responsibilities in addition to punishing the breach of the rules.

Hanlon is not the first person in racing to discover that in the age of social media, how something looks is what matters and an apology for causing offence will never fully address the damage. Nor, in all likelihood, will he be the last. But if his ban means that even one of his fellow trainers stops and thinks before doing something they might come to regret, it will have served at least some of its purpose.