BHA's reliance on supposition in Faugheen case proves how little has changed

It is alarming to see the manner in which the BHA’s case against Tim Brennan unravelled last week and realise that warning signs all of 14 years old failed to be heeded.

In 2004, after the BHA charged four individuals in relation to the use of inside information to lay Hillside Girl at Carlisle, the regulator’s case ultimately collapsed because of a key witness’s refusal to cooperate, a lack of evidence and an overreliance on supposition.

Throw in that one of the alleged sources in each episode was an equine professional practicing onsite (Brennan being Faugheen’s vet at Willie Mullins’s Closutton base and Steve O’Sullivan being Hillside Girl’s farrier at Alan Berry’s stable) and disputed inferences about the respective horses’ soundness, and the parallels are uncanny.