Roach ponders future after ban

Former trainer Hannah Roach is pondering her future after picking up a 32-week ban from point-to-pointing, but not licensed racing yards or racecourses.

Roach, 23, who lives in Cheshire, was handed the sentence, plus a fine of £150, when appearing yesterday at a BHA disciplinary hearing into a case dating back to May last year involving point-to-pointer The Creadan Rogue. The then nine-year-old, who Roach was responsible for training at the time, was known to be prone to breaking blood vessels and was administered with the drug furosemide the day before he ran in and won a race at Eyton-on-Severn.

Roach, whose ban begins in November, effectively ruling her out of the whole of the 2024/25 point-to-point season, told the inquiry: “I was young and naive, still being mentored by Mr O’Shea, and now I’m thoroughly on my own.”

Delivering the verdict, panel chairman Clement Goldstone KC, told Roach: “We wish you well. We are sure you will learn lessons from this unhappy experience.” The Creadan Rogue was disqualified and first place handed to Sametegal, the mount of Freddie Keighley.

Roach was in her first year as a trainer having taken responsibility in July 2023 for a yard of pointers at the stables of her former employer, Joe O’Shea. In March 2024 she saddled Time Leader to finish third behind Sine Nomine in the Festival Hunters’ Chase at Cheltenham and she went on to become the 2023/24 season’s leading trainer of hunter chase winners.

However, in November last year she suffered a serious fall on the gallops – breaking her back in the process – and spent eight days in hospital. The following month she and O’Shea went separate ways and he resumed training.

During the hearing Roach pleaded guilty to breaching the rules, but said later she was shocked by the sentence.

The Creadan Rogue, the horse at the centre of yesterday’s inquiry

She said: “I fully accepted the fine, but I hoped they would be more lenient with the disqualification, and that I might get a suspended sentence. It is what it is, and I am very aware that I and Pecos [Iskandar Pecos, the horse she was riding when suffering the gallops fall] could have been killed in the fall. That puts it into perspective.

“I’ve had a terrible 12 months and now I’ve got lots to think about. I’m just going to keep my head down and consider my future. After something like this you could be put off racing all together.”

Iskandar Pecos, who Roach owns, won Cheltenham’s intermediate hunters’ chase final in May 2024 and was being considered for some of last season’s leading races in that sphere, but he was sidelined by the fall which injured his owner. Roach intended training him and a maiden for the coming season, but said: “I could lease him to someone else to train, but I wouldn’t know who – it’s something to think about. I really don’t mind if he has another year off, and it won’t do my back any harm to have a longer break. It’s still not fully recovered.”

In an interview with Chris Cook of the Racing Post, O’Shea said: “For some reason, we were convinced, me and Hannah, that it was 24 hours, out the system. We gave it to him at 7.30am on the Sunday morning. He’s not racing till 4pm on the Monday. I thought, it’ll be way out of his system.

“We never read the packet. Ignorance. It was her first season, I was recovering from a [heart] bypass.

“This was a genuine mistake. We’re guilty. Hands in the air. But it was a first offence.”